Zero Point
by pollywantsa
Summary: A disaster at an experimental laboratory will devastate the Tracy family and have repercussions that may extend beyond the bounds of planet Earth. Original series and featuring guest appearances by Captain Scarlet, Captain Blue, and assorted Spectrum personnel.
1. prologue

_This story is set in the original Thunderbirds TV-verse (1965), and in the original Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons universe (1967, although I am admittedly less strict about the Captain Scarlet universe and apologise if any New Captain Scarlet references slip in - I will try hard to control myself.)  
_

 _As this is a crossover, and as I like to think that Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet exist in the same world and time, this story uses the 2060s timeline._

 _As ever, all thanks go to the Andersons for blessing us with such outstanding entertainment for the last 50 years. (Can you believe it? 50 years!)_

* * *

 **zero point**

 _prologue_

* * *

'Eyes open Gordon, we're about to break through.'

'Got it.' Gordon punched a keypad and glanced up at the overhead monitor. 'Externals active.'

'Acknowledged.' Virgil geared the Mole down and prepared to break through into the sub-basement ahead. The sprawling complex of Faulkner Labs had collapsed on itself during a freak earth tremor – a simple enough rescue for a well-equipped response team, but IR had been called in when the rupturing of isotope casings stored in the facility had made entering the building too hazardous for local authorities to attempt.

It seemed these days that International Rescue was increasingly about containment – six months earlier a rescue at a university in Chile was compromised after its entire store of experimental viruses was released during an earthquake, and a few months after that IR had been called in to recover one of Virgin Galactic's experimental hyperdrive ships as it threatened to dump its core into the atmosphere. Virgil was all for the advancement of technology and the development of new sources of energy, but why the hell couldn't these people ever get their procedures under control?

The Mole lurched suddenly and the view through the forward screen changed, the rock through which they'd been tunnelling falling away to reveal a splinter of light and the laboratory they'd been aiming for.

'We're in.' Virgil powered the systems down and unbuckled his harness, grimacing as Gordon dropped a hazard suit onto the deck at his feet. Virgil hated wearing the suits. Hated the constriction of his movements, hated the breathing and rebreathing of filtered air. But if there was uncontained radiation in this basement then they had to take precautions, and that included decontaminating themselves – and all their equipment – afterwards. He rubbed a hand wearily across his face at the thought. 'Better get us a radiation reading.'

Gordon fed the scan through to the main console so Virgil could see it for himself, and then routed the readout to Scott at Mobile Control for confirmation. 'Weird,' he said, sitting back in his seat so he could watch Virgil's face. 'There's nothing out there except background. It's clear.'

Virgil turned to look incredulously at his younger brother. 'Then why the hell are we here?'

* * *

'You're sure about that?' Scott studied the Mole feed intently before turning his head to stare at the dark-suited man hovering nervously beside him.

'No, I'm not.' Virgil's voice sounded weary in Scott's headset. 'But you've got the same readings we have. Unless we've misinterpreted it or the sensors are malfunctioning, the area is clear.'

'Understood.' Scott continued staring at the gentleman beside him. 'I've got the Faulkner CEO here. Stand by.' He cut the connection and swivelled in his seat.

Martin Brooks was by nature a nervous man, but today his anxieties had reached critical levels. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet, wilting beneath the onslaught of the cool blue eyes that fixed themselves unwaveringly on him. 'I can explain.'

'Explain what?' Scott removed his headset and rose to his full height, which was considerably taller than Faulkner Labs' sweating CEO. 'Either there is hazardous material in that building, or there isn't. And if there isn't, and if we've been called out to a situation that the local services could have managed, then your corporation will be liable for all costs incurred.'

Brooks removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at his face. 'More than happy to pay for the costs, no matter the outcome. But there _is_ hazardous material in that basement, and one of my scientists is unaccounted for. Please.' He fumbled the handkerchief back into his pocket. 'This is a lot worse than it looks.'

Scott's gaze didn't waver. ' _How_ much worse?'

* * *

'Interesting.' Gordon closed the zip on his hazard suit and slumped back into his seat as the radio silence continued. 'What do you think's going on?'

'No frickin' idea.' Virgil jammed his hands into the gloves of his suit and methodically connected the seals.

Gordon turned his attention to the helmet in his lap, licked his thumb and swiped at a smudge on the faceplate, and then lowered the helmet carefully to the floor. He leaned back over his console and toggled randomly through the external readings. _Oxygen, temperature, contaminants –_

'Mole from Mobile Control.' Scott's voice came unevenly through the speaker, the transmission splintered by thirty metres of solid rock.

Virgil shifted in his seat and turned towards the comms. 'Reading you.'

'CEO says there should be only one man in the sub-basement, a William Masters, and he was working on some kind of perpetual energy device when the building came down.'

Virgil turned to Gordon and frowned. 'Life signs?' he mouthed silently. Gordon shook his head in the negative and Virgil returned his attention back to the comms. 'Can you confirm no radiation?' he said into the microphone.

'No radiation,' Scott confirmed. 'But the device apparently has other effects, so keep those hazard suits on.'

"Um...' Gordon came to lean over Virgil's shoulder. 'Mobile Control, what do you mean by 'other effects'?'

'Unclear.' A burst of static cut through Scott's voice. 'The CEO thinks the device may have been the cause of the earth tremor, so your first job is to cut the power on that thing before it brings the rest of the city down.'

Virgil rubbed distractedly at his mouth. 'FAB,' he finally said, killing the connection and looking dubiously at his brother.

Gordon shook his head incredulously. 'What the hell did he mean by 'other effects'? And what could be in there that's dangerous enough to bring a city down? He's kidding, right?'

'You know as well as I do that when Scott is sitting at that console he doesn't have a single funny bone in his body.' Virgil pulled the helmet of his suit into place and activated the seals. 'Ready?'

* * *

To Gordon, it always felt like walking in space. The cavernous dark of the underground held the same disconnect from reality. The same sense that you never really knew which way was up.

He exited the Mole ahead of Virgil, his booted feet treading unsteadily over broken stone, and aimed his torch back along the tunnel through which the Mole had just bored. Reassured that the way back out was clear, Gordon turned his attention to the fractured wall ahead of him and the shard of yellow light that splintered past the nose of the Mole and collected in a pale pool on the ground at his feet.

'Can you hear that?' Gordon aimed the torch towards the source of the light.

'Hear what?' Virgil dropped down from the Mole and landed awkwardly in the field of broken rock. 'Shit. No. What can you hear?'

'That.' Gordon stepped closer to the rent in the wall and leaned his face towards the opening. 'A humming sound.' He cocked his head, listening. 'Hear it?'

'Must be the power source.' Virgil came up behind him and nodded confirmation as the sound became more audible. 'C'mon.' He prodded Gordon towards the opening.

Gordon clamped his hands against the broken edges of the wall and hauled himself through to the laboratory, stumbling over pieces of plaster and tile as his brother clambered through the opening behind him. He kicked a clear space in the debris and turned to survey the area.

'Holy crap…' Gordon breathed as the source of the light became visible.

'What the hell is it?' Virgil's voice echoed through the helmet comms.

'And how the hell did it do _that?'_ Gordon directed Virgil's attention down towards the tiled floor.

'Mobile Control to Mole team.' Scott's voice cut abruptly through the open channel, making them both jump. 'Show me what you're looking at.'

Gordon shook his head silently.

'Scott…' Virgil began.

'Give me a visual,' Scott ordered.

Gordon raised a hand to his helmet cam. 'Mobile Control,' he cautioned. 'We've located Masters, and it isn't pretty.'

'Understood.'

Gordon glanced at Virgil as he activated the camera. 'Mobile Control, are you receiving?'

'Affirmative.' Static crackled through the connection. 'Stand by.'

Gordon kept his helmet cam pointed down at Masters, but aimed his eyeballs back towards the source of the mysterious light. 'What do you think it is?' he said to Virgil.

'I don't know.' Virgil stepped away from Gordon's side and began to pick his way along the wall of the lab. 'Some kind of energy generator, they said.'

'Careful.' Gordon's eyes followed Virgil's movements. 'Don't get too close to it. You've seen what it can do.'

Virgil stopped to stare at the swirling sphere of energy that occupied the centre of the room. 'Don't worry,' he responded distractedly, fighting the urge to reach out and push his fingers through the sphere and into the bubble of light beyond. His eyes fell to where Masters lay, half in and half out of the bubble, his body cauterised neatly in two. Virgil curled his fingers carefully into his palm.

'Mobile Control to Mole team.' Scott's voice echoed loudly in their ears, made them jump again. 'At this point your priority is to shut off power to the device.'

'No shit, Sherlock,' Gordon muttered beneath his breath.

'I didn't copy that. Please repeat.'

'Repeating, Mobile Control. Can you advise shut-off procedure.' Gordon turned his head to follow Virgil as he recommenced his trek to the far side of the room. Seen through the swirling mass of yellow light Virgil appeared pale and distorted, a shimmering ghost with uncertain edges.

'Stand by.'

'Standing by,' Gordon acknowledged. He pivoted in position, looked at the sphere, the walls, the two neat pieces of Masters where they lay on the floor. 'Virg,' he called out. 'I think it's changing.'

Across the room Virgil stopped and turned to look at his brother through the shimmering field of light.

'The colour.' Gordon indicated the bubble with a nod of his head. 'It's changing.'

Virgil stared into the light.

'And the noise is getting louder.' Gordon could feel sweat forming on his brow as he fought down the sudden urge to get out of there as fast as he could.

Virgil shook his head, the movement barely perceptible through the shifting dome of light. 'I don't think so. I think – '

'Mobile Control to Mole team.'

Virgil closed his mouth at the interruption.

'Shut-off instructions as follows.'

'Reading you,' Virgil acknowledged. 'I'm standing at what looks like the main console now.' He glanced down at the console, at the switch marked 'mains power,' and hoped it would be that easy.

'There should be a monitor displaying power inputs and outputs,' Scott's voice filtered into his helmet, 'and a graph logging something called neutron initiation.'

Nope. It wasn't going to be that easy. 'I see it.'

'We need you to take that down to zero, but slowly. The CEO advises a minimum of eight minutes to shut-down, depending on the dampening effect.'

 _Crap_. 'Get over here,' Virgil called to Gordon. 'I need you to time this.'

Gordon didn't move from his position. 'That thing is definitely getting bigger.' He gestured towards the body of Masters. 'When we got here, most of his legs were outside the bubble. And it seems to have swallowed more of the floor.'

Virgil squinted towards the two feet that protruded from the energy mass. 'Shit,' he cursed beneath his breath, then said out loud, 'Mobile Control, we may have a situation.'

'I heard,' Scott said, his voice sounding small and far away. 'Continue the shut-down sequence. Gordon, show me what's happening.'

'This thing is growing by the second.' Gordon pivoted on his heels and performed a slow pan of the lab. 'I don't think we have enough time to shut it down.'

'There's time,' Scott replied, his voice tight beneath the rising static.

Gordon licked at the salt that had settled on his lips. 'Scott – '

' _There's time.'_

'Are you seeing what I'm seeing?' Gordon aimed the camera squarely at the energy bubble, at the boiling, swirling mass of yellow light. 'This thing is changing.'

'He's right, Scott,' Virgil cut into the conversation. 'I've commenced the shut-down procedure, but the monitor indicates the neutron energy is still peaking.'

'Give me a visual on the console, Virgil.'

Virgil dutifully activated his helmet camera, waiting in silence as Scott and the Faulkner CEO discussed their options thirty metres above them. He winced as the background hum increased in pitch and penetrated uncomfortably into his brain.

'Did you feel that?' Gordon said from the other side of the bubble, his voice muffled by the increasing hum. 'The floor just moved.'

Virgil felt it, saw a trickle of plaster fall from the ceiling and disappear sparking into the sphere. If this thing caused another quake… 'Shut up and time me.'

'Ninety seconds down,' Gordon replied with a grim efficiency that indicated he hadn't taken his mind off the process for a second. 'It's getting brighter.'

The floor shuddered again, and tiles splintered free from the walls around them.

'Fuck.' Sweat dripped stinging into Virgil's eyes and he blinked, unable to wipe his face through the bulky contamination suit. His vision blurred as the light changed, the yellow burning across the spectrum to a sick and violent green. He turned his attention back to the console, to the neutron indicator peaking past maximum. _'Time,'_ he snapped at his brother as he reduced the power one more level and watched incredulous as the neutron indicator moved into the red.

'One-eighty.' Gordon's voice came out of the burning light as he continued his countdown. 'It's getting bigger,' he shouted over the increasing hum.

Virgil glanced over his shoulder, the edge of the bubble less than a metre away from him. The readings on the console showed that the external power was reducing, yet the sphere continued growing before his eyes, expanding ever-outwards in visibly perceptible pulses. The body of Masters was now fully engulfed, and laboratory equipment was disappearing millimetre by millimetre into the burning light as he watched.

'It's drawing on another energy source,' Virgil shouted over the comms. 'I think it's self-perpetuating. I can't shut it off!'

'We need to get out of here!' Gordon bellowed as the comms in his suit failed, the hum of the sphere drowning out all sound the same way that the light now drowned out his vision.

* * *

Scott's world was turning to shit. All he could see on the screen was green. He could barely hear Brooks' voice as he intoned instructions beside him, the words tumbling out of the CEO's mouth as he blabbered about neutron energy and quantum electrodynamics and –

'Gordon, listen to me,' Scott barked into the mic, but the comms were down. Dead. Not even static burned the speakers and Scott was left with Gordon's last frantic words echoing in his ears… _We need to get out of here…_

Scott lashed out a hand, grabbed hold of Brooks by the shirt and pulled him up to his level. 'What _is_ this thing?' He could barely restrain his anger as his fingers twisted into the starched linen and he felt the fabric give way in his hand. _'Tell me how to shut it off!'_

'You can't.' Brooks dangled helpless in Scott's grip, his voice now faint and trembling. 'Equilibrium has failed. Get your men out of there before it's too late.'

* * *

Virgil backed up against the console as the perimeter of the sphere expanded inexorably towards him, an oily, gelatinous bubble poised electric inches from his face.

'Gordon,' he said into the dead comms, his words useless against the increasing noise as the sphere continued its relentless advance. He could no longer see his brother, the burning light drowning out all colour, all sound, all evidence of the room around him. The floor shifted beneath his feet, the console vibrating at his back, and he was vaguely aware of dust falling from the ceiling and drifting down the visor of his helmet. 'Gordon,' Virgil said again, hoping that his brother wasn't waiting for him on the other side of the light – or worse, was trying to fight his way around the sphere to get to him.

 _Shit._

With the certainty that came from brothers being brothers, Virgil began to carefully inch his way around the sphere, his limbs restricted by the bulky suit so that he could barely move, could hardly breathe, couldn't see through the moisture that was building up inside his faceplate. Sweat slicked his brow, trickled into his eyes and hovered in tremulous, annoying drops on the tips of his lashes. He blinked ineffectually, eyes burning from the salt and the light, every atom of his body alert to the danger that loomed so close to his face. The surface of the sphere was alive with static, tendrils that he could see on the afterburn of his retinas, and feel, stinging him, through the thick skin of his suit. And the noise… the noise was overwhelming, penetrating his brain like thin, hot knives, and pulsing and vibrating the molecules of his body the same way that it was vibrating the atoms of the air around him.

There was pulse, a tangible sensation that made his flesh crawl as electricity sparked from the sphere and penetrated his suit, tracked stinging across the moist surface of his skin, discharged itself crackling through the roots of his hair. A wall of sound erupted out of the light and shattered the walls around him, tilted the floor and knocked him from his feet, sent him tumbling helpless into the shimmering, pulsing sphere. Virgil only had time to close his eyes as he passed through the membrane of light, although it did him no good, the light rushing into him and filling him with fire. He felt a scream coil in the back of his throat, but the light stole the sound from his mouth, sucked the air from his lungs and evaporated the moisture from his tongue. Electricity forked green across his retinas and then all was darkness. And silence. And the screaming inside him ceased.


	2. one

**zero point**

 _one_

* * *

Time, Jeff Tracy had discovered, was a fickle bitch. What she gave with one hand she stole away with the other. In fact, he thought, as he squinted bleary-eyed at the document displayed on his screen, he could feel her, now, breathing down his neck and greying his hair with every exhalation.

Jeff looked down at his hands where they rested on his desk – they were his father's hands now, the skin creased with the years and burned brown by the relentless rays of the Pacific sun, and the blood slowing inside them so that it didn't quite reach the tips of his old-man fingers. Jeff closed his document and rubbed his palms together, his hands cold despite the tropical sun that blazed hot and yellow on the leaves of the palm trees beyond the windows.

'Ginkgo biloba,' Tin-Tin pronounced from her position on the couch. She turned another page of her magazine, not looking at him, but living with him long enough to know that the rubbing of hands would shortly precede a cigar on the balcony as he warmed himself up. Jeff liked to think that tropical living had made him soft, but Tin-Tin had other notions about too much red meat and a liver weakened by too many glasses of Jack, and through an unknown process of deliberation had decided that gingko biloba was Jeff Tracy's only hope for vascular salvation.

'You know where you can stick your gingko biloba,' Jeff muttered as he pushed his chair out from his desk and got to his feet, stretching his back with an audible crack. 'Ah, shit,' he said at the sound, the expletive falling from his mouth so unexpectedly that he glanced guiltily across the living room at Tin-Tin, who idly turned another page of her magazine. Time wasn't hurting Tin-Tin, Jeff lamented to his inner self as he strolled across to the bar. She remained as fresh and dewy as when she'd first moved to the island – no doubt thanks to the two-hundred dollar pots of face-cream that Alan lavished upon her, along with the jewellery and the fine silks and whatever the hell else the desperate bastard was smuggling onto the island.

'Funny you mention that,' Tin-Tin said, one page after Jeff had muttered about where she could stick her gingko, 'because a suppository would be the most efficient mode of transportation. I'll have father prepare one for you.' She licked a finger and turned another page, making Jeff laugh as he poured his whiskey and chinked ice into the glass.

'No, thank you.' Jeff aimed his drink towards her in cheeky salute, even though she wasn't looking at him. 'Best medicine on the planet,' he said to her anyway, downing a swallow and winking when she glanced up from her magazine and gave him a good-natured scowl.

'Really, Mr Tracy – '

'Really what, Miss Kyrano?'

' – how you're not – '

'How I'm not what?'

' – _how_ you're not – '

The video phone on Jeff's desk trilled. The company line. Tin-Tin lifted the magazine to her nose again.

'You're not going to get that?' Jeff inquired with well-calculated male-chauvinist piggery.

'It's Saturday,' Tin-Tin informed him as her thoughts drifted back to the pink and black number on the page in front of her. Time was that Tin-Tin would have jumped for that phone. Back in the day she could never do enough for Jeff – his messages, his typing, pouring his coffee and draping sprigs of parsley across his egg-salad sandwiches. But the world had changed since then – Time had her sticky fingers in everything around here.

'Is it?' Jeff looked down at the ice in his depleted glass, wondering if dementia was kicking in or if it was time to give up the hard stuff. 'I thought it was Friday,' he muttered to the top of Tin-Tin's head as he walked back to his desk and looked at the calendar. 'Yes, it's Friday,' he confirmed over the still ringing phone.

'It must be Saturday somewhere on this planet,' Tin-Tin smirked at her magazine, making Jeff grimace and vow inwardly that he would keep her away from his sons from now on. It had taken a few years, but they were finally starting to rub off on her.

Jeff settled behind his desk and activated the vidphone, angling the monitor around to better face him. 'Hello Claire,' he said as the plump face of his secretary filled the screen, the creases between her brows made deeper by her anxiety at the amount of time it had taken for somebody to pick up the phone.

'Oh, Mr Tracy, I didn't think anybody was going to answer.'

'Sorry about that.' Jeff put what remained of his whiskey on the desk, the ice clinking as it settled in the glass. 'My assistant,' he said, glancing at the potted peach draped idly across the lounge, 'is on a break at the moment. What can I do for you?'

'I have a call for you, Mr Tracy. The gentleman wouldn't wait for me to reschedule at a time that better suited you, and since it's Spectrum, and since it seems official… '

Jeff stared at his secretary's earnest face, his heart lurching with something that might have been dread.

'Alright, Claire.' He picked up his pen and pulled a blank pad of paper towards him. 'Put the gentleman through. Oh, and Claire, secure the line, please.'

For all Jeff knew, Spectrum were contacting him on business – probably wanted Tracycorp to tender for transport to their Mars base, one of the worst-kept secrets in the aerospace industry. But there was also the Faulkner Labs incident lurking in their mutual pasts, and the thought of Faulkner Labs being dredged up again made him sick to his stomach. Jeff considered reaching for what was left of his whiskey and realised that his hands were trembling.

'Mr Tracy. Forgive me for intruding on you at home.'

Without Jeff's noticing it, his secretary's face had been replaced by the stern features of a caucasian male on the downward side of middle-age, his white hair making him look older than he probably was, and the whole accentuated by the snow-white colour of his uniform. Jeff looked at him, at the clean-shaven jaw, at the pale blue eyes in a hard and immovable face that all but screamed career soldier, and was relieved to find that he didn't know this man. Had never met him before. Yet the shaking in his hands continued.

'I'm Colonel White,' the owner of the pale eyes said, making Jeff's gaze flicker down to the snowy expanse of kevlar on the colonel's chest. _Of course you are,_ Jeff thought distractedly, remembering the Spectrum officers that he'd met at Faulkner's in their paint-pallet uniforms, their identities safely hidden behind their garish colour-codings. Jeff's gaze met the colonel's again, White's impassive expression as hard and unyielding as a glacier.

'Mr Tracy,' the colonel continued. 'There is no easy way to say this, but we have a man in custody who we believe to be your son.'

Across the room Tin-Tin lowered her magazine.

 _Why couldn't he stop his hands from shaking?_ 'I have four sons Colonel White, and they are all currently accounted for.' Jeff's eyes met Tin-Tin's. _Are they?_ Tin-Tin nodded.

'I understand. But the man we have in custody has been tentatively identified as Virgil Tracy.'

Jeff stared at the screen, vaguely aware of Tin-Tin moving in behind him and placing a hand upon his shoulder. 'That's not possible,' he said at last, before uttering the words he had avoided for best part of two years. 'Virgil passed away – '

'I know. I have the Faulkner's incident report here on my desk. I also know that despite the best efforts of International Rescue and Spectrum retrieval units, that no body was or has since been recovered.' The corners of White's mouth moved briefly, the barest flicker of an apologetic smile. 'I'm sorry, but before we can proceed I need a positive identification.' The image on the vidphone changed. 'Is this your son, Mr Tracy?'

Jeff stared at the image that now filled the screen. 'This isn't possible,' he repeated as the shaking in his hands threatened to overtake his body. 'That can't be my son.' Jeff's voice was torn around the edges, broken, as if it had been dragged screaming over stones. 'My son is dead.'

Colonel White's ice-cool visage returned to the screen.

'It is Spectrum's experience, Mr Tracy, that the dead can, and do, walk again.'


	3. two

**zero point**

 _two_

* * *

Colonel White cut the connection and met the cool blue eyes of the officer seated on the other side of his desk.

'Poor man,' White said out loud, more for himself than for the benefit of the officer who'd been party to the exchange, and swiveled his chair around so that he faced the wide expanse of window behind him instead of the penetrating gaze that he could now feel boring into the back of his head.

 _Poor man…_ The expression on Jeff Tracy's face had been indescribable – equal parts grief and hope, and the kind of fear and horror that accompanies a wound that just won't stop bleeding. White stared into the cirrus that stretched out beneath Cloudbase like a smoke-filled sea, thinking dark thoughts and distracted only by the breathing of the other occupant of the office. Any moment now there would be fidgeting from the other side of the desk, the clearing of a throat, and then –

'You can't release Tracy to his family.'

White's head turned at the words and he swiveled back to face Captain Blue. 'I don't plan to.'

Blue looked at him in that calm and unnerving way that he had, the clear eyes seeking for an effective way to pierce the colonel's glacial façade. Failing that: 'Excuse me, sir, but what exactly is your plan?'

'Having family around might loosen Tracy's tongue. He's not talking to us, but he might tell his father where he's been.'

Blue continued to study his commanding officer, not convinced that this was one of the colonel's better ideas. It was true that Tracy hadn't been cooperative, but given the circumstances of his incarceration Captain Blue couldn't blame him. Since his arrival at Cloudbase Virgil Tracy had been interrogated daily. He'd been scanned and re-scanned, had his skin and his blood and his bone marrow extracted from him in less-than-pleasant circumstances, and been kept in isolation from the outside world for the best part of two months – little wonder Tracy no longer felt like talking.

And then there was always the most obvious problem staring Spectrum in the face.

'What if he really doesn't know,' Blue said.

White stared back, because that possibility was something he wasn't yet prepared to entertain. 'Where's Scarlet?'

'Observing the prisoner, sir,' Blue replied, unsurprised by the deflection.

'And what does Captain Scarlet think about our guest?' It was a rhetorical question, but White wanted to hear Blue say it and the captain had no choice but to oblige.

'Scarlet says he can smell Mysteron all over him.'

* * *

Scott Tracy stepped into the lounge of the villa and cast an uneasy glance around the room. The place was deserted, the unnatural silence intensified by the echoing clang of steel doors slamming shut on the other side of the wall behind him. The venting hiss of exhaust gases from Thunderbird 1's hasty shut-down sounded faintly, dulled by twenty centimetres of steel-reinforced concrete and barely audible as the panel that led to Thunderbird 1's hangar revolved smoothly back into position.

Scott's gaze swept more critically around the room, pausing on the magazine dropped half-open on the couch, and the tumbler of whiskey left half-empty on his father's desk. His eyes touched briefly on the piano, the silent ghost that lurked forever in his field of view, relentlessly drawing his gaze no matter how hard he tried to evade it. Two years, and Scott still held on to the irrational hope that one day he would come through the door and Virgil would be seated at the baby grand, riffing effortlessly through Dangerous Game or tying his fingers in knots over Rachmaninoff.

Movement caught his eye, and Scott turned to see Jeff and Kyrano on the other side of the lounge's wide glass doors – they must have waited on the balcony as Thunderbird 1 descended into her hangar, watching as the palm trees were whipped by One's exhaust into a dry frenzy of rustling. Now, as the trees settled into silence and the swimming pool slid slowly back to conceal the hangar entrance, Jeff turned bleakly to Kyrano, despair etched into his every move.

Jeff spoke, his lips moving silently as Scott watched through the glass, and Kyrano nodded mutely in response. Scott didn't want to go out there. Not if it was bad – bad enough to bring him home. But he hadn't flown seven thousand miles at Mach 19 on nothing but his father's imperative to _'come home, now,'_ to not find out what the hell was going on.

Kyrano looked up as the glass door slid open on its tracks, inclined his head in his age-old greeting and slid his hands from the folds of his robes. They were good hands, working hands, as lined by the years as Kyrano's face, but the old man's eyes were bright, still young, and they looked gravely now at Scott as he turned towards him.

'Mr Scott,' Kyrano said as he passed Scott in the doorway.

'Kyrano,' Scott returned, unnerved by the sustained directness of the gaze. He closed the door behind Kyrano's retreat and turned to find his father with his elbows on the railing, hands rubbing wearily at his face. 'Dad,' he said to his father's back. 'What's going on?'

'Pour yourself a drink,' Jeff said, not turning around. He waved a hand towards the collection he'd assembled on the balcony railing: two tumblers and a bottle, one-third gone. 'What's Thunderbird 2's ETA?' he asked his son.

Scott eyed the array of glassware and resisted the urge to send it tumbling to the flagstones below. In the absence of a straight answer, the resultant smash would be satisfying. 'Still at the danger zone,' Scott told him **,** wondering why they were talking about Thunderbird 2 when his father had recalled him from duty and ordered him to come home. 'I left Gordon and Cam to pack up Mobile Control so I could get back here as soon as possible. Are you going to tell me why I needed to do that?'

Jeff reached for the glass nearest his elbow, poured himself a drink and downed it in one hard swallow. 'Spectrum called,' he said, still not looking at his son. 'A Colonel White.' Jeff filled his glass again and returned the bottle back to the railing. 'Tim Casey knows him,' he said, swirling the whiskey around the inside of the tumbler. 'I suppose I should call Tim. Find out what I can before we go.'

'Go where?'

Jeff glanced down at the pool, the water still rippling from Thunderbird 1's recent entry. Light from the swells bounced bright into his eyes and brought amber prisms dancing from the whiskey in his glass.

'Dad?' Scott took hold of his father's arm and turned Jeff around to face him. 'Go _where?'_

Jeff looked at his son, his grey eyes as bleak as a cold winter's day. 'I want you to fly me to Spectrum.'

'Spectrum? But what – Why?'

There was only one way to say it, and thank god Jeff had Jack Daniels to help him. 'They tell me they've found Virgil,' he said. And then he laughed. A short, sharp, desolate bark at the joke that the universe was playing on them.

Scott's grip tightened on his father's arm. 'You mean they've found his body? After all this time?'

'Not his body.' The mirth died in Jeff's eyes, his lips twisting bitterly. 'They told me they've found _Virgil.'_

Jeff watched as emotion chased across his son's face, the cobalt of Scott's eyes intensifying as he found the meaning behind his father's words. 'It has to be a mistake,' Scott said when the reality became clear, his voice rising and cracking with disbelief. 'It has to be. I was _there,_ Dad. There was nothing left. _Nothing.'_

'I know,' Jeff said, because he'd been there too, standing bereft in the hollowed-out remains of the Faulkner Labs sub-basement. No trace remained of the lab itself. No equipment. No furniture. No shards of broken glass or tile to show that men had once made something in that safe, secluded place. All that remained now was a burnished void of nothing, a perfect sphere of glass-fused stone that had been burned impossibly into the rock. A dark, dead chamber that echoed with the voices of Spectrum technicians, swarming ant-like through an emptiness that only hours earlier had contained his son.

Jeff shivered. A wave of anger passed abruptly through him, as though he couldn't believe that life could be cruel enough to do this to him. Or maybe he was angry because he couldn't permit himself to hope for the alternative. 'I don't believe it,' he said. 'I _can't_ believe it. Your brother's gone.'

He shook free of Scott's grip, savagely drained what was left of his drink and slammed the empty glass down hard on the railing. 'He's _gone.'_

* * *

'The Colonel's bringing in the family,' Blue announced as he closed the door to the observation room behind him.

'Makes sense,' Scarlet replied, not looking up. He was seated exactly where Captain Blue had left him hours ago, unmoved and unmoving, his eyes on the tempered glass screen that separated Spectrum from what was ostensibly the enemy – one Virgil Tracy.

'Does it?' Blue said to him, unconvinced. He took the chair next to Scarlet and angled it around to better observe the prisoner. Right now he was sleeping – or at least he appeared to be, the broad chest rising and falling slowly beneath a grey Spectrum-issue t-shirt. 'If Tracy had something to tell us we'd have broken him by now.'

'You can't break what isn't human.'

'And yet every test Fawn has done indicates otherwise.'

'Then Fawn needs a new test,' Scarlet snapped. 'I told you, Adam, I can – '

'I know. You can smell it.' Captain Blue sighed inwardly as the headache he'd been fighting all morning began to make a bigger nuisance of itself. He took off his uniform cap, dumped it onto the nearest chair and scratched his nails through his blond hair. He needed a haircut. It was almost touching his ears.

'Even the Colonel must be starting to think he's human,' Blue started again. He'd never doubted Scarlet's ability to sense when a Mysteron was near before, but… 'Why else would he be bringing in the family?' Blue pressed his fingers into his temples and rotated them firmly. 'What if Virgil Tracy is exactly what he says he is – the unhappy victim of an unhappy accident?'

The object of their attention stirred on the bench that did double-duty as both bed and diagnostic pallet and rolled over so that he faced them, opened his eyes and stared at the two-way mirror that filled up one wall of his cell.

'He knows we're here,' Scarlet said.

'Bullshit. He's just hating on whoever's on the other side of the glass.' Captain Blue looked sideways at his partner, troubled by the working of the muscles in Scarlet's jaw, the rhythmic clenching and unclenching as Scarlet's attention fixated on the man on the other side of the two-way window. 'You're starting to sound paranoid, Paul. If the colonel didn't agree with your assessment – '

'With my paranoia, you mean.'

'Whatever. The point is, if he didn't agree with you, you'd be in lockdown by now. Or worse, on the other side of that glass.'

Scarlet's lips tightened. He knew exactly what it was like on the other side of the glass, having your meat cut from you in chunks so the doctors could watch you regenerate right before their eyes. Tracy had exhibited none of the typical traits of retrometabolism, it was true, but what if the Mysterons had improved the process? What if they were producing replicants that were indistinguishable from humans?

Tracy was sitting up now, and looking at the head. He did this a lot, thinking about how badly he needed to use it or not – even after two months of pissing for an audience he still baulked at the indignity. He slowly braced his hands on his knees, an unconscious prelude to standing up, and Scarlet rose from his chair to stare intently at the prisoner – this had been the first sign of movement for hours.

Captain Blue ceased his futile attempt to release the tension in his head and accepted that he would be living with a headache for the rest of the day. 'What are you looking for, Paul?'

'Not looking.' Scarlet leaned carefully towards the two-way and balanced his fingertips against the glass. 'Waiting.'

As if on cue, Virgil Tracy rose to his feet and turned deliberately to face the mirror. As specimens of humanity go, he was a fine one, although two months of confinement had paled his skin, and the bruises around his eyes detracted from his handsome face, and if they kept him much longer in the box he'd start to lose his muscle tone as well.

If he lived that long.


	4. three

**zero point**

 _three_

* * *

About ten seconds after the roar of Thunderbird 2's thrusters subsided into the steady hum that indicated cruising altitude had been reached, Gordon Tracy unhitched his restraints, got up out of the jump seat, clapped a hand on the warm meaty slab of Cameron West's left shoulder and said 'I'm heading for the pod. You got this?'

Cameron twitched the rock-hard trapezius beneath Gordon's fingers and smirked. Just a little. Cameron West didn't have enormous muscles, but they were _hard_ muscles, and he was justifiably proud of them – it was just a shame that his devotion to his physique had turned out to be such a source of entertainment to the Tracy brothers when he first arrived on the island. Until he started slamming Tracys down on the judo mats, that is.

'Por supuesto,' Cameron said to Gordon in mangled Spanish. It wasn't only his physique that Cameron took seriously – his entire life was one of focussed dedication, and since he'd joined International Rescue he'd been learning the basics of as many languages as he could. Enough at least to be able to land Thunderbird 2 in any country on the planet and say 'stand back,' 'you're welcome,' and 'can I have your number,' because you never knew when a lovely lady might be just grateful enough to oblige.

'Obrigado,' Gordon replied in pretty good Portuguese, taking a moment to inspect Two's flight displays over the pilot's shoulder. Cameron twitched his trapezius again, hard enough to make Gordon pull his hand away.

'You do recall,' Cameron reminded his supervisor with exaggerated politeness, 'that I flew C-four-tens for the Marines? And you seem to have conveniently forgotten about my secondment to Glenn Field, flying transport for the Zero-X. God,' he tutted emphatically, 'that transport was a pig.' Cam cocked his head reminiscently and stared at the blue sky out of the forward window. 'And how could anybody possibly forget that blissful summer I was posted to Marineville and was opted in to pilot Stingray because Troy Tempest sprained his ankle in a dance contest?'

Cameron's tone was both amused and amusing, but after a year of one Tracy or another peering anxiously over the muscular planes of his shoulders, the not-so-subtle surveillance must have been starting to grate. 'This big green monster is nuthin,' he drawled, oblivious to the eye-rolling of Gordon still peering proprietorially over his shoulder, 'and that little yellow boat of yours would be a picnic in the park – if you would just let me in it.'

Gordon snorted derisively. 'You never piloted Stingray you big fat liar, and your fat ass is never getting in my boat.'

'Then I've got news for you bucko – my fat ass has already been in your boat and I farted in your seat.'

There was an unholy silence as Gordon considered the possibility of any truth behind that statement. And then: 'That better not be true.'

'My best one ever,' Cam sighed wistfully, 'fuelled by your grandma's bacon-fried beans.' He shook his head in self-admiration. 'It was a beautiful thing, a perfect storm of sound and vibration. Alan was up on Five that day, and he told me it triggered all the tsunami buoys stationed off Honolulu.' Cameron paused for dramatic effect and leaned back with satisfaction. _'All_ of them.'

Gordon couldn't help but laugh as Cameron grinned sideways at him, the pilot's elbow darting out and missing Gordon by millimetres as the younger man neatly sidestepped away. 'Now piss off,' Cam said. 'Me and my baby have got some flying to do.'

That checked Gordon in his tracks. He still thought of Two as Virgil's baby – hell, they all did – and it still jarred to see another pilot sitting so comfortably at the stick. Fortunately for the Tracys that's where any similarity to Virgil ended – ex-Captain Cameron West was Marine through-and-through, from the over-pumped thighs that held up his muscular body to the light-brown hair that he kept in regulation buzz-cut with the help of his handy-dandy solar-powered all-weather clippers. He was pushing 32, or maybe it was 33 – he was vain enough that he'd started being cagey about it – and creases were tracking faintly at the edges of his pale green eyes, but Cameron had somehow retained the physical and mental stamina of a 20-year-old, and at times it was hard for them all to keep up.

But then, Gordon had been having trouble keeping up ever since the incident at Faulkner's, when he'd woken in a hospital bed with the imprint of strange lightnings flash-burned onto his hands. Two years later the marks still hurt, the scars too tight for his skin, and they still held the delicate, gossamer-like tracings of the mysterious vortex that made them.

* * *

The red arrow of Tracy 1 spun her circle at the end of the runway and poised, nose pointed towards the horizon and a sea that shimmered white with diamonds. Scott reached for his aviator glasses, settled them on his nose and pushed his hair back from his forehead – he was sweating, and it wasn't just from the sun beating down on the tinted glass of the cockpit, or the button-up shirt that clung suffocatingly to his body in the humid island air. Scott's fingers settled on the yoke and stayed there.

'Dad.'

Jeff stared at the foliage that lined the runway, at the hibiscus flowering in random bursts of orange among a sea of green. Here and there a yellow hybrid turned its blooms towards the sky, the exotics a stark contrast to the natives of the island. Kyrano had planted them as an indulgence for Jeff's second son, the contrast of yellow petals with a central blush of pink among Virgil's favourites for watercolour.

'What are we doing – ' Scott said when his father didn't reply, ' – walking into that lion's den after what they did.'

Jeff's eyes trailed after a butterfly that burned iridescent in the undergrowth. 'Whatever game they're playing,' he said when the bright blue wings had been swallowed by the murky green depths, 'we need to shut it down.'

'Except we don't know what game they're playing.'

The tone of Scott's voice made Jeff turn to look at him. There had been a thousand times in Jeff's life, a million times, when he'd looked at his sons and tried to find himself in those untroubled faces – if he could see himself in the arch of an eyebrow or the curve of a lip, or the clean, square cut of a jaw. Now, as he looked at Scott, he wondered if he was as changed as his son was. If any of them realised what the last two years had taken away from them.

'We've _never_ known what game they were playing,' Scott was saying with bitterness and recrimination and hatred scorching his words, and Jeff was glad he couldn't see his son's eyes behind the mirrored lenses of his glasses.

* * *

 _Shit._

 _Shit!_

This wasn't happening. This _couldn't_ be happening!

Scott had fallen a dozen times in the pitch black of the tunnel, his feet stumbling and twisting as he loped over the broken surface the Mole had dug through to Faulkner labs. The torch he carried was useless, its narrow beam barely picking out rocks and stones in the debris field ahead of him, but it was the only light that fractured the darkness of this empty, hollow place, and the only sound to be heard was the heaving of his lungs and the blood pounding, loud, in his ears.

Scott's foot twisted over a stone and he went down on one knee, cursing as the torch slipped from his fingers and bounced along the tunnel floor. He lunged desperately after it as it clattered down the incline, its beam bouncing drunkenly around the walls of the tunnel as he lurched back to his feet, swearing and sweating and feeling blood trickling from his knee and gravel stinging in the palms of his hands.

He should have been able to see the lights of the Mole ahead of him.

He should have been close.

He should have been fucking _there_ by now!

'Virgil!' Scott bellowed into the darkness, because the comms were dead and he'd heard nothing since Gordon's last frantic transmission.

Don't think about it…

'Gordon!' Scott bounced the torchlight around the rough-hewn walls of the tunnel.

 _Don't think about it!_

And then he saw it, highlighted abruptly by the beam of his torch – the dark hulking outline of the Mole.

'Virgil!' Scott sprinted towards the dead, dark shape, the torchlight picking out the dirt-encrusted drill, the open, gaping hatch, the yellow paint chipped and streaked with something black. 'Gordon!' He leapt into the cab, the beam of his torch jerking crazily across the empty interior. Nobody was there. _Nobody was there!_ Scott turned to the console and jabbed frantically at switches but the board remained dead. Dead. Everything was fucking _dead!_

Scott lifted his arm in the torch-lit darkness. 'John,' he snapped into his wrist-comm, but the comms still refused to activate, the residue of whatever had fried the Mole interfering with the signal. _Dammit._ John would be organising help, he knew, but it wasn't coming anytime soon – unless that moron Brooks had enough brains to send somebody straight down after him.

Scott's hand fell back to his side, his fingers balling into a fist as he stared blind into the darkness. There was something in the air… the odour of newly-turned earth and the iron tang of stone, an afterburn of ozone and the unexpected taint of burning meat. He jumped down from the cab and back onto the dirt, cursing as his feet hit the uneven surface and nearly took him down. He made his way towards the nose of the Mole, the beam falling on the bright white outline of an IR hazard suit, sprawled in a heap just metres ahead of him.

 _No..._

Scott scrambled to the crumpled form and dropped to his knees beside it. He shone the torch onto the faceplate of the hazard suit, the perspex smashed and the face beneath it cut and bloodied. _Gordon._ Scott propped the torch against a rock and used both hands to ease the helmet off, his fingers reaching blindly for the pulse at his brother's throat.

'Gordon.' Scott cupped his palm against Gordon's cheek, his thumb wiping at the blood in his brother's eye. 'Gordon... c'mon. Speak to me. Open your eyes and speak to me.'

Shit.

What was wrong?

 _What was wrong?_

His eyes dropped to his brother's chest, his gaze falling on the gloves shredded from Gordon's hands and the burns that forked like lightning in the yellow beam of the torch.

 _Jesus…_

Scott turned to survey the darkness beyond the nose of the Mole. _What the hell happened?_

'Listen.' Scott wiped again at the blood in his brother's eye. 'I'll be back,' he said. 'I'm coming back, okay?' He waited a beat, watching for a flicker of consciousness that never came, then scooped up the torch and lurched towards what he hoped was the lab. There was an opening there, barely visible in the thin light, and Scott's free hand caught hold of the smooth, cold edges, the torch shining through the gap and into a void of nothing.

' _Virgil!'_ he shouted, his brain taking a moment to process what he was seeing as he swept the light in an arc through the darkness. He was looking at a perfect sphere, a hollow, empty void that swallowed his voice the same way it swallowed the light from his torch.

'Virgil!' Scott played the beam around the vault of the dome, the walls as smooth as black glass and the darkness as deep and dangerous as a dead and bottomless sea.

' _Virgil!'_

Shit.

 _Fuck._

Scott hesitated on the lip of the sphere, the torch useless in that gaping void of nothing. _Light. He needed more light._ He turned back towards the tunnel. _And Gordon needed help._

Scott loped the short distance back to the Mole, leapt through the open hatch and played the torch around the cab to get his bearings. The medpac was still in place, the oxygen cylinders untouched in position beside it, and Scott dumped the torch on the floor as he unclipped one of the tanks, his fingers fumbling at the metal fastenings until the cylinder came free. He rolled it towards the hatch, hauled the medpac from its niche and tossed it after the cylinder, then scooped up the torch and turned to face the pitch-black rear of the cab. There were arc lights in the equipment bay, and if their circuits hadn't been fried like everything else in this fucking –

' _Step out of the vehicle.'_

Scott froze. He turned his head. _Had John got help down here already?_ He could see light out in the tunnel, the beams of torches slicing through the darkness beyond the hatch. There were voices coming closer, shouts, directions being issued with well-ordered efficiency, and yet more lights appeared out of the dark. They converged around the Mole and moved on towards the lab, and Scott could hear the sounds of feet crunching across broken rock.

The instruction came at him again, the inflection the same, a complete carbon copy of the original. _'Step out of the vehicle.'_

That didn't sound like any help that John would have sent.

Scott took a step towards the open hatch, one hand moving to rest on the pistol holstered on his belt. He aimed the torch out into the darkness and found a uniformed officer caught in the yellow glare. Zipped up tight in black and blue kevlar, the officer's clean-cut face was impassive and unreadable in the steady beam from Scott's torch.

'How about it,' the officer asked, not even blinking as the torchlight played across his face. He gestured with the business end of his gun. 'You coming out, or do I have to come in and get you?'

Scott's lips tightened, the muscles of his jaw working as he considered his options. Beyond the blue-suited officer he could see lights moving, men in coveralls setting flares and perimeters. And Gordon was out there. _Any minute now they would find him, and –_

'Do you have medical personnel?' Scott challenged. 'I've got one man down and another's – '

'Just step out of the vehicle.'

'I've got one man down,' Scott said again, because apparently this asshole was deaf, 'and – '

'Your pal's already being taken care of. Now, I'm not asking you again – '

'What?' Scott leapt from the cab, brushing forcibly past the officer and knocking him sideways on his feet, his elbow making deliberate contact with the man's solar plexus as he passed. The officer grunted and folded at the waist, one arm reaching for him blindly as Scott dodged away, his eyes on the officer's gun and oblivious to a shadow peeling wraith-like from the dark and launching itself towards him.

' _Big…'_ wheezed the man in blue as he dropped breathless to his knees, _'…mistake…',_ and Scott moved too late to prevent a second man impacting heavily against him, the air exploding from his lungs as he was tackled face-down to the rock-strewn floor. He crashed heavily to the ground, too stunned to prevent a knee from digging into his spine with an audible crack and sending a bolt of pain sparking through his body like lightning.

'Take it easy,' a voice said before Scott could draw breath. 'We're here to help.'

'Get… _'_ …Scott dragged air back into his lungs... '…the fuck… _off_ me!'

'I said take it _easy,'_ the voice repeated, and what felt like the hard, bony spur of an elbow lodged itself roughly against the back of Scott's neck and mashed his face down into the dirt. 'Be a bit more cooperative and I might consider letting you up.'

Scott writhed beneath the assault on his pressure points and twisted his head towards Gordon, his cheek scraping painfully through gravel. 'What,' Scott grunted towards the group that were crouched around his brother, 'are they doing to him?'

'They're taking him to a hospital,' the disembodied voice said, clipped and British and annoying. The deadweight shifted and seemed to get even heavier. 'Your turn. How many of you were down here when the device malfunctioned?'

'Get _off_ me!'

'How _many?'_ The elbow dug hard against the base of Scott's skull.

' _Two,'_ Scott ground out. He could feel his spine compressing, his legs numbing as sensation leached out of them. 'Gordon,' he huffed as he tried to get his arms up under him, his fingers scraping futilely through broken stones, 'and Virgil.'

'Who's the one over there?'

'Gordon – '

'Which makes you…?'

' _Scott,_ dammit! I need to – '

'You weren't down here when it happened?'

'No! I was – '

'You were on the surface?'

'Yes!' Scott twisted violently and managed to dislodge nothing more than another grunt out of his own lungs. 'I've answered your damn questions, now get the hell _off_ me – I need to find _Virgil!'_

There was silence for a moment and the elbow lifted from the back of his neck. 'We haven't found anybody else.'

'He was _here_ ,' Scott said. 'He has to still _be_ here!'

There was another stretch of silence, another shift of the knee against his spine. 'Where was he when it happened?'

'In _there,'_ Scott said, his head jerking towards where the lab was supposed to be, and the deadweight shifted as it followed his direction.

'There's nothing in there,' came the voice again, and the prissy, British tones were really starting to piss. Scott. _off._

'I _know,'_ Scott growled, his anger and his frustration unleashing in a guttural, inhuman sound as he struggled beneath the weight on his back. The group around Gordon turned briefly at the sound and then turned away again.

'You really need to calm down,' said the voice.

'Fuck you.'

'Tsk,' said the man on Scott's back. 'That's no way to speak to an officer of the law. The sooner you get a grip on the situation the sooner we can start looking for this Virgil.'

The rock-hard lump that was crushing Scott's ribs suddenly lifted and he was hoisted roughly to his knees, his legs numb and nerves burning as the sensation painfully trickled back into them. He had time for one deep inhalation before a beam of light was shone blinding into his eyes and Scott raised a hand to deflect it, found himself blinking at a dark-haired man in a red uniform.

'Now,' said the man in red, and there was an unmistakable tang of steel behind the tightly-clipped vowels. 'Play nice and don't make me restrain you.' The officer leaned cautiously forward and removed Scott's pistol slowly from its holster. 'Smart move – ' he said as he straightened up, one eyebrow rising in appreciation as he inspected the compact little weapon, '– not using this.'

Scott used the back of his hand to wipe the dirt from his mouth. 'This was supposed to be a rescue,' he said as he rose warily to his feet.

'Not any more.' The man in red turned Scott's weapon over in his hands and then slid it snugly into his belt. 'You won't mind if I keep this,' he inquired politely. 'You seem a little unpredictable.'

Scott spat, but could still taste dirt on his tongue. 'What the hell are Spectrum doing here?'

The man in red took a step closer and looked Scott carefully in the eyes. 'Faulkner Labs is a Spectrum research facility,' he told him. 'Technically, you and your team are trespassing.'

* * *

Gordon activated the Pod's internal comms station and positioned the headset mic an approximate centimetre from his lips.

'Thunderbird 5 from Thunderbird 2,' Gordon said, his voice just loud enough to carry over the hum of Thunderbird 2's engines. The deck juddered beneath his feet as the aircraft passed through a patch of turbulence, metal rattling around him along with the creaks and groans of equipment as it strained against strapping and webbing. 'John. You read me?'

'Thunderbird Two from Thunderbird Five. I'm reading you, but your mic's on its way out. Can you speak up?'

'I'm in the Pod,' Gordon said, as if that explained it all.

It didn't. 'Why?'

'Because…' _Shit._ 'John, what's going on?'

Silence chewed through the connection.

'John?'

'Spectrum have been in contact,' John said, from a million miles away.

Gordon closed his eyes to better feel the burning in his hands. 'Do you know why?'

'Father's been called in,' John said in reply. And when Gordon didn't answer: 'He's leaving now. With Scott.'

Gordon opened his eyes. 'Leaving for where?'

Thunderbird 2 passed through another patch of turbulence. They were over the South Pacific now, the warm air rising from the sea in violent and unseen updrafts. Gordon watched as the Firefly strained against her clamps – he could smell her from here, her body caked with soot and the overpowering stench of smoke and charcoaled wood and, _maybe he was imagining it,_ burning flesh. For a moment Gordon could smell his own body burning, could see his hands immersed in that green ball of light, the gloves of his hazard suit disintegrating like cobwebs being blown slowly apart by a green and fiery wind.

And over it all there was the noise...

… _and Virgil, immersed silent and screaming inside that sphere of sound and light._

Gordon inhaled, a deep shuddering breath, and pressed his fingers against the pounding in his head.

'They're headed for Spectrum HQ,' John's voice said.

The pressure in Gordon's head increased – he could almost feel the blood pulsing beneath his fingertips. 'Do you know why?'

'No.'

'John.'

'I said I don't know.'

' _Tell me why!'_

'Calm down,' John said. 'You sound like – '

'What? I sound like _what?'_ Gordon clamped his teeth down on his words. He knew what he sounded like, but god help him, his hands hurt, and the stink from the Firefly was triggering memories that were more painful than the scars on his skin.

* * *

 _There had been no clocks in what Gordon had generously called his 'room.'_

No windows.

No daylight and darkness.

No time and too much time, all rolled into one.

In his waking moments, when the darkness faded enough that the pain would spark from his hands to his brain and nudge him out of his dope-fuelled haze, Gordon would blink at the light that blazed too bright in the ceiling and close his eyes again, ignorant of the voices murmuring at the periphery of his hearing, and of the shadows that passed like clouds across his face.

It was pleasant. It was like floating on a sea, the waves drifting him gently to the shore and then just as gently drifting him back out to the deep again. Gordon would have liked to stay there in the deep, sinking slowly into a place that contained no light and no sound, and where the image of his brother wasn't flash-burned in green on the surface of his retinas. But the sea was cruel, even the sea that flooded the spaces of his brain.

'Any change?' said a voice from somewhere far away.

'Nope.'

'Doc been in yet?'

'About a half hour ago.'

'You see the kid's hands yet?'

'Wish I hadn't.'

'Weird, huh. Kind've looks like he got struck by lightning.'

'Except he didn't. He got caught in that – '

A tray dropped. The sound of metal hitting the floor and spinning out across vinyl tile.

'Shit.'

'Watch what you're doing.'

A knee cracked, and Gordon could hear objects being carefully scraped up from the floor.

'He wake up?'

'No.'

Aftershave swirled in his face and Gordon slid open his gummed-up eyes.

'Yes,' corrected the voice.

 _Déjà vu._ Gordon had the uncanny sensation that he'd been caught in this nightmare before. He squinted at the blur of face that hovered above him, at the dark hair that stood out against a halo of too-bright light.

'Scott?' Gordon croaked, his throat closing on nothing.

'What did he say?'

'I don't know.' Footsteps moved around the bed. 'They got him flying so high he shouldn't be able to talk at all. I'll call the doc. And keep back – Fawn says he's human, but how can you can be sure?'

'He's human.' The blur passed out of Gordon's field of view. 'You've seen his hands. He's not healing so fast.'

'Nix it – he's looking at you. Think he's awake enough to understand what we said?'

The blur stopped and turned, the features coalescing into an unfamiliar face as Gordon blinked in confusion. Two uniformed men observed him from the foot of his bed, their hands on their holsters and their eyes locked warily on him.

'What…' Gordon said, tried to say, his words slurring and his lips feeling like they were a million miles away from his brain. He tried to sit up and felt the world tilt with the effort, the monitor beside the bed pinging loudly to betray the rapid beating of his heart.

'Take it easy,' the man in the brown uniform said, his eyes moving to watch the peaks return to green on the monitor. 'Doctor's on his way.'

Gordon was having trouble breathing against the flutter in his chest. 'What happened?' He tried to sit up again, but vertigo laid him back down on the bed.

'You're in a hospital,' the second man told him, the one in pink. 'Try to stay calm. You've had an accident.'

'An accident?' Gordon's fingers twitched inside their sheath of bandages. It hurt and he grimaced, and the man in the pink uniform took a sudden step towards him.

'Don't,' the one in brown warned.

'He's gonna throw up,' the man in pink said, ignoring the warning and reaching for a bowl.

'Leave it. Doc'll be here any minute.'

The dish was thrust beneath Gordon's chin. 'It's my rotation and I'll be damned if I'm going spend the next twelve hours inhaling _eu de puke.'_

'Have it your way, but the Colonel will bust your ass if he finds out.'

The man in pink's lips pursed, as if he were considering that possibility, but he kept the bowl lodged firmly beneath Gordon's chin. 'What about it, kid?' The man stared questioningly into Gordon's face. 'Want me to keep this here?'

Gordon didn't know. His head hurt. His hands hurt. The light was too bright and he didn't know where he was or how he got here. He was trying to remember… _what was he trying to remember?_ His mind quested backwards, like a film moving in reverse, but the last thing he remembered, the last solid thing he remembered… was the sun. Sunshine. The brightest sunshine he had ever seen.

'You look like a sunset,' Gordon said to the man in pink, stupidly, irrationally, his words still slurred and his mouth still positioned somewhere far away from his face. He stared up at the figure that stooped over him, at the face that he'd confused with Scott when he had first opened his eyes. Sunset had the same dark hair, slicked back straight from a neat, square face, and the same strength in his features that Scott had. But the brown eyes were wrong, and they stared down at Gordon with a disquieting unease. Despite the fact that Sunset was close enough to keep the bowl positioned right beneath Gordon's chin, the officer seemed poised to snap the bowl – and himself – away at any moment.

'Where's Scott?' Gordon asked through the sandpaper in his throat.

Sunset glanced back towards his partner and the man in brown gave a tiny shake of his head, his face and his hair as nondescript as the colour of his uniform. He was weaker around the chin than Sunset, his expression tense and disapproving as he balanced on the balls of his feet, his hand never leaving the weapon holstered at his hip. 'Doc'll be here soon,' he said, like a record stuck in a groove. 'Better get away from him.'

Sunset removed the bowl and stepped away, and the overhead light glared down full into Gordon's eyes, sickly and yellow and _burning._ It wasn't the _sun_ Gordon remembered, _it was –_

'Where's Virgil?' Gordon moved in the bed, because maybe Virgil was here, or maybe he was in another room, or maybe – 'I have to get up.' Gordon tried to get his legs out from under the covers, pawing ineffectually at the sheets as pain sparked through his hands, the sensation as clean and sharp as though daggers were stabbing through his fingers. An IV tore stinging from his arm, and there was blood, he knew there was blood, and a cacophony of beeps sounded loudly from the equipment parked beside his bed.

'Calm down,' somebody said, and there was a blur of pink at the edges of his vision, feet scuffing fast across a vinyl floor, and Sunset was beside him again, his hands pushing Gordon back down to the bed. 'You're going to get hurt.'

'I have to find Virgil,' Gordon told him, annoyed because he shouldn't have to explain himself and he shouldn't be here and this stupid pink bastard should just be letting him up out of the bed. The officer's aftershave wafted again into his face, strident and suffocating and maybe Gordon was going to throw up after all. _'I need to find Virgil!'_

'Jesus kid, calm down.' Sunset leaned his full weight against Gordon and pinned him down to the bed. 'There isn't any Virgil,' the officer said to him calmly and considerately and looking him square in the eyes. 'And you're not going anywhere.'

* * *

'We'll be on the ground in twelve minutes,' Cameron announced when Gordon returned to the cockpit. 'Give or take a minute.'

'Great,' Gordon replied, his voice low enough that Cameron had to turn his head to hear.

'Great,' Cam parroted beneath his breath, wondering what the hell that meant. He turned back to the board and toyed with the idea of taking Two off auto, but decided another few minutes or so wouldn't hurt. 'So,' he said with what he hoped was the right amount of nonchalance, 'what did he say?'

'Who?' Gordon asked as he adjusted his harness for descent.

'You think I don't see when a line to Thunderbird 5 goes across my board?'

Gordon stared at the back of Cameron's buzz-cut head. 'He said 'hello'.'

'That it?'

'That's it.'

'Nothing about why Scott took off so fast I can still taste his dust in my mouth?'

'No,' Gordon replied, wondering how easy they were to see through these days.

'Okay.' Cam glanced at his watch, cross-checked the chronometer on his board and looked out of the forward window to see Tracy Island cresting the horizon, right on schedule. She was a beautiful sight, an oasis of green in an endless stretch of cerulean blue, the rocky outcrop of her volcanic cone wreathed with marshmallow puffs of cumulus. There were mornings when Cameron West would wake in his double-wide bed and imagine he must be still asleep and dreaming – not only had he landed one of the most coveted jobs on the planet, along with a salary that was still capable of making his eyes bulge whenever he checked his bank account, but he had all of that and paradise too. If the Tracy family wanted to keep their secrets then they were entitled to. He reached for the autopilot release, but was stopped in his tracks by the voice behind him.

'Spectrum have been in contact,' Gordon said.

Cameron's hand moved away from the auto-release and he turned in his seat to look at Gordon. 'Is this about you,' Cameron asked quietly, knowing enough of the story to ask, 'or your brother?'

Gordon shrugged, his body pinched so tight that it looked to Cameron like the movement hurt. 'Father and Scott are on their way to Spectrum HQ.'

'Now?'

Gordon nodded, his face twisting with unexpected fury, and Cameron had the distinct impression that if Gordon hadn't been secure in his harness he would have got up and punched a hole in something.

'What more do they want, Cam? They got everything they could out of us – one way or another.'

'Don't sweat it.' Cameron attempted what he hoped was a reassuring smile, but knew he'd botched it at the last second. 'You know what the military are like. It's probably follow-up – Spectrum are just making sure IR is keeping their secrets.'

'Sure,' Gordon responded tonelessly. 'Spectrum knows all about keeping secrets. They hide them away where nobody will ever find them.'

* * *

 _One door with a lock._

The nauseating stink of antiseptic.

An expanse of featureless beige walls.

And a pair of colour-coded Spectrum officers, rotating watch at the end of his bed.

Mudpie and Sunset, Gordon had christened them – although 'Mudpie' was too kind an analogy for the uninspiring colour of that particular uniform. 'Baby-shit brown' was more apt. Or, as Gordon had referred to him in the darkest hours of his incarceration, 'The Stool.'

Both officers were armed, their fingers resting on the holsters of their weapons, their eyes full of mistrust as they rotated their watch. They never answered any of Gordon's questions, though he asked the same ones every damn day. Where was his family? Where was he? When would he be able to leave? Sunset and Stool bore the bombardment with well-trained indifference, and the doctor, when he would show, would insist on just one more blood sample, please. 'Just the one,' the doctor would smile around his flat Australian vowels, and another vial of Gordon's life would be leached away. 'And let's take a look at those wounds,' the doc would add, his tone friendly and reassuring despite the smile never reaching his eyes. And then he'd be gone, with his needles and his vials and his fake fucking smile, and Gordon would be left with nothing but the tracks on his arms and the colour-coded officers watching him from the foot of his bed.

'Hey.' Gordon's voice broke the silence of the small room. 'Captain Sunset. You busy?'

Captain Sunset's attention had been focussed on a handheld tablet, but now the officer's head lifted to look at Gordon, his dark eyes appraising the patient with critical attention.

Gordon twitched his bandaged hands to remind the officer of his invalidity. 'Could you help me out with some water?' Christ, he was getting tired of begging for the necessities of existence – he even needed help to piss, but Gordon wouldn't be asking Sunset to help with that anytime soon.

The officer rose to his feet and poured water into a cup. 'It's Captain _Magenta,'_ he reminded as he kinked a straw into an appropriate bend and slipped it into the cup. 'That must be the fifteenth time I've told you.'

Gordon eyed the hot-pink kevlar of Magenta's uniform. 'Sorry. I can't hear you over the noise that uniform is making.'

Magenta's lips tightened, but it wasn't into an amused smile. More like a pained grimace. 'You know,' he said as he held the cup in front of Gordon's face, 'I've heard about you.'

'I thought the court established that it wasn't me.' Gordon closed his lips around the proffered straw. At any other time the crack would be amusing, but there was no humour in Gordon's voice. He was in too much pain to put the effort in.

'From a friend who served in the WASP,' Magenta continued.

Gordon worked at draining the cup.

'Shame, what happened to you back then,' Magenta said.

Gordon's lips let go of the straw. 'Is that what you people do all day? Sit around in a candy-coloured knitting circle?'

Magenta smirked a little at that, because sometimes, he had to admit, it did feel like a knitting circle.

Gordon shifted in his bed, the movement sending sparks of pain through his arms and making sweat break out across the back of his neck. He abandoned his attempt to get comfortable and avoided the gaze of the dark-haired man who watched him so closely.

'Want me to call a nurse?' Magenta asked when Gordon slumped back into his pillows, not surprised when he shook his head in the negative.

'No.' Gordon stared at the ceiling. 'I'm tired of trying to figure out the looks on their faces.'

'Well,' Magenta put the cup back on the table, 'I can tell you that at least one of them wants to screw you, and I wasted ten minutes of my life trying to figure out why. Fifteen minutes, maybe. It took a while.'

Gordon's eyes widened slightly at the inappropriate remark. 'Ex-Olympic athlete?' he suggested helpfully.

'Millionaire rich kid,' Magenta countered sarcastically.

'Jealous, much?'

'A little.' Magenta had plenty of money now, but he'd scraped his early years up from the streets of New York and the hardships of his childhood still chafed. He stared thoughtfully at the patient, then slid a hand behind Gordon's back, adjusted the pillows and carefully lowered him back into them. He had strict orders not to interact with the prisoner, but Magenta had a rebellious streak that surfaced whenever he thought he wouldn't get caught.

Gordon looked up at him when he was done, the eye contact between them unexpectedly frank and disarming.

'When can I see my family?' Gordon asked.

'I don't know,' Magenta hedged. 'You'll have to ask the doc.'

'The 'doc' doesn't tell me jack.'

Magenta's lips quirked in sympathy. He couldn't help but feel sorry for the guy – Gordon still didn't realise he was a 'guest' in a Spectrum facility, and that his family didn't have a clue where he was.

'Some officers from HQ will be here tomorrow,' Magenta finally told him. 'The doctor has said you're well enough to answer questions.'

'But I've answered questions.'

'There's more they need to know.'

'My brother's gone.' Gordon closed his eyes and ended the conversation. 'That's all anybody needs to know.'

* * *

Lieutenant Green, recently of Trinidad and dreaming right now of white sands and waving palms and, let it be said, cool green coconuts, logged receipt of transmission and turned to face his commanding officer.

'Colonel,' he said, but Colonel White was engrossed in his report, his paperwork splayed in untidy patterns across his desk. Green's gaze moved to the observation port at the colonel's back – at this altitude the sky was so thin and pale it was almost white, and the only thing keeping the inhabitants of Cloudbase from an icy, terror-filled death was the two-inch steel of the pressurised hull. Two inches between life and free-fall was not something that Lieutenant Green liked to think very much about, but the sound of the jet stream barrelling past his window could still get him up at night to check the seals around the glass.

'Colonel,' Green ventured again, and this time White's head lifted to look at him, the colonel's mouth pursed into a contemplative scowl.

'This entire affair is damn peculiar, Lieutenant,' White said, pronouncing Green's rank the old-fashioned way.

'Yes, sir,' Green replied as the colonel shuffled his papers together and stuffed the dog-eared wad inside a manila folder. The colonel preferred printed words to those on a screen – he saw patterns better when they were laid out on paper, and when the papers were laid out across his desk. But not this time.

White slid the folder aside with a look of disgust. The Faulkner situation had been cold for two years and looked to be staying that way – until Virgil Tracy had made his unanticipated reappearance on the scene.

'What is it,' the colonel snapped at Green, looking sternly at the lieutenant and noting with irritation the layer of tan on the young man's face. White hadn't felt the unfiltered sun on his face for a year. At least.

'HQ report that Scott Tracy has logged flight plans to Heathrow,' the lieutenant told him. 'ETA is estimated at oh-nine-hundred hours, London time.'

'Damn his hide!' White glared across at Green as though the lieutenant were personally responsible for the crack in his plans. 'I thought our understanding was that Jeff Tracy would come alone.'

Green looked back at his commanding officer and resisted the urge to shrug. 'Yes, sir,' he said, because the colonel was expecting a response and Green didn't have anything particular to say.

White glared at the lieutenant for another thirty seconds and then redirected his anger to the sheaf of documents on his desk.

'Alright,' he snapped at the manila folder with its unyielding pile of information. 'It is what it is. Arrange a ground escort from Heathrow to London HQ, and organise for Captains Grey and Magenta to accompany me to London.'


	5. four

**zero point**

 _four_

* * *

It was a beautiful day, the sort of day that Jeff's childhood had been liberally salted with. The sky was overwhelming, stretching as far as the eye could see across the wheat bowl of Kansas, sunburned crops colliding with polarised blue all along the up-rushing horizon. And overhead, the fluted tails of stratus were drawn in delicate brush-strokes as ice-crystals formed in the rarefied air.

'Mr Tracy.' It was the Pastor. The same man who had buried Jeff's father. And Jeff's wife. And now here he was again, come to bury Jeff's son.

 _One more moment,_ Jeff said to the too-blue sky. _I'm not ready yet._ His gaze moved out across the late summer day – he could barely see the old house from here, it was lost amongst the patchwork of fields and fences, and the criss-cross straight lines of blacktop with the cars moving along them like beetles glinting iridescent in the sun. The cemetery hill wasn't high, as far as high goes, but it afforded a view that Jeff's 12-year-old self had forever found irresistible – so tempting that he willingly braved the ghosts of the dead just so he could catch hold of the promises contained in that big, wide sky. And in winter, when the sun set early and the Milky Way stretched bright across the cold, clean dark, the stars would settle so close to the ground that young Jeff Tracy could reach out his hand and almost touch them.

'We're ready to begin,' the Pastor prodded gently. He was an old man now, older than he'd been when Jeff had watched his father's coffin sink down into the dry spaded earth. And older than he'd been when Jeff had stood in this same place not long after his father had gone down, with the sky greyer than the pastor's salt-and-pepper hair and the wind cold and damp as it rushed up from the winter fields below. For the briefest, briefest, oh-so-briefest of moments, Jeff had been glad that his wife was nestled safe and dry inside her cocoon of polished mahogany. She hated the winter. She told him she wanted to live by the sea, someplace where the rain came down warm from the sky. _Maybe an island,_ she'd laughed at him when they were young and broke and so very blindsided by love, and he'd laughed back that the only island he could afford was the mudflat in the middle of old man Murphy's creek. They'd planted their flag on that mudflat one warm summer evening, with the creek gurgling gently around them and the fireflies shining softly in the dark, and Jeff had never felt so calm and so at peace as he had that night, with his girl safe in his arms and the stars stretching over them and the water lapping softly against the edges of his universe. He'd kissed her fingers and promised her an island, a real one, with a snow-white beach and slow-rustling trees – hell, he'd promised her the _world_. But his girl's world had proven too tenuous for him to hold on to, and what Jeff didn't know until it was far too late was that islands had their dangers, too.

There was a rustling at Jeff's back, the bone-dry hands of the Pastor moving amongst the bone-dry pages of the Bible. It had its own sound, the Bible, the crackle of rice-paper ironed thin around the cries of the martyrs as they transformed into sacrificial lambs.

'Yes,' Jeff said, turning around. He wasn't ready, but he was never going to be.

The Pastor smiled with understanding, his lips stretching patiently across a face as desiccated as the dirt that he stood on. His limbs were thin beneath the loose folds of his suit, the kind of bone-thin that age and weariness and getting-ready-to-die brings, and the creases of his face were deepened by the afternoon sun that slanted into his watery blue eyes. He hefted the brick of his Bible, his weapon against the impermanence of the world, and turned to face the mourners.

'Friends,' the Pastor said in his dry, reedy voice, the timbre made thin by its overuse at the pulpit. He cleared his throat as the people gathered closer to the grave, the men stifled in their suits and the women brushing at their skirts when the wind tried to lift them. And when the hems had been settled and the sweat wiped from perspiring brows, the Pastor laid open the book in his hands and commenced to read. Isaiah 57.

'The righteous perish,' the Pastor called into the wind, 'and no one takes it to heart. The devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk upright enter into peace. They find rest as they lie in death.'

Jeff looked down at the coffin. There was nothing in there, just a photograph of Virgil that his mother had carefully laid down on the satin.

'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?' The Pastor moved on to Romans. 'Shall trouble?' he asked the watchers pointedly. 'Or hardship?' His papery fingers rested on the leaves of his book. 'Or persecution or famine or danger or sword?'

Jeff looked at his mother. She slumped hollow in her chair with her hands loose on her lap, and her husband's headstone standing sentinel at her back.

'As it is written.' The Pastor looked up from his Bible and surveyed the crowd with his old-man eyes. He didn't need to read the words – they had been long-burned into his memory. 'For your sake we face death all day long. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. Neither death,' he said, his voice gaining strength from something Jeff could neither see nor hope to understand, 'nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers will be able to separate us from the love of God.'

Jeff looked at his four sons, stiff-backed in their suits, their shoulders square and their faces hard and their souls so utterly, utterly broken, and wondered how his God could love him now.

* * *

'It never rains but it pours,' Scott muttered as Tracy One taxied towards the hangar space that Tracycorp leased from Boeing. It was almost dark outside the cockpit, the morning light barely breaking through a low ceiling of dark and tattered cloud and the wind gusting so hard across the open tarmac that the little jet's wings flexed wildly in the gale. It had been a bitch landing in the crosswinds, and the landing gear was still recovering from it. 'I don't know how Penny stands it,' he said as a burst of rain slammed noisily into the windscreen and added punctuation to the drama.

'She never mentions it,' Jeff replied, his eyes picking out the unmarked car parked discreetly to one side of the hangar. 'Besides, it's not that bad.'

'I used to live here, remember?' Scott glanced briefly at the car and then returned his attention to manoeuvring the aircraft into the hangar. 'Believe me. It's that bad.'

Tracy One passed into the confines of the hangar, the overhead lights making diamonds blink yellow in the drops of rain that tracked slowly down the cockpit canopy. It was pretty, in an abstract kind of way, but Jeff was in no mood for abstracts. He needed the concrete certainty of absolutes: wet and dry. Hot and cold. Virgil or not-Virgil… Jeff shuttered that thought away and took refuge in the inanity of their conversation about the weather. 'We've seen worse than this on the island,' he said to his son.

'True,' Scott agreed, remembering the first storm of the season and the palm tree that was slammed half-way through the kitchen window. 'But tropical storms have defined beginnings and endings. This stuff,' he said as he brought the aircraft to a halt and powered the engines down, 'can go on for _days.'_

'Then,' Jeff said, 'it looks like we're going to get wet.'

Scott nodded towards the hangar doors and the Spectrum officer who had appeared like magic on the threshold, and they watched as the officer stamped water onto the dry cement then took off his cap and shook it free of rain.

'What colour is that?' Jeff asked. 'Is that mustard?'

Scott watched as the officer repositioned his cap and approached the aircraft. 'Looks like tan.'

'Must be the one Gordon referred to as Mr Turd,' Jeff said, deadpan, so that Scott turned his head to look at him.

'The Stool,' Scott corrected, equally deadpan.

'Suits him.'

'Doesn't it.' Scott slid the canopy back on its rails and looked down at the officer.

'Good morning,' The Stool called up to the cockpit. He shifted on his feet, a drop of water falling from his visor and spattering on the cement. 'I'm Captain Ochre,' he told them, 'and I'll be escorting you to Headquarters.'

* * *

'There's my girl!'

Cameron caught hold of Grandma Tracy by the waist and spun her away from the kitchen counter, ignoring her girlish protestations as he lifted the mixing spoon smoothly out of her hand and jammed it into his mouth. 'Mmm,' he said around a sticky mouthful of batter. 'What is that? Is that lemon? Are you making your famous lemon cake?' Cameron squeezed her tightly, genuinely pleased at the prospect of having cake. 'Grandma Tracy, are you making that for _me?'_

'Get away with you,' Grandma said, snatching back the spoon and pushing him affectionately away – no mean feat considering she was half his size. 'This cake isn't for you. It's for my grandson.'

'Which one would that be, then?' Cameron grabbed hold of her again and squeezed so hard that she let loose an unladylike little squeal. 'Go on Gramma, admit it, you like me better than them anyway.' He kissed the top of her grey head, not minding the smear of batter his lips left in her hair. 'Don't worry,' he whispered theatrically, 'I won't tell anybody – '

' _Ahem.'_

Cameron dropped the Tracy matriarch and spun around to face the youngest of the Tracy brothers, seated archly at the table.

'Alan.' Cameron nodded a greeting, his tongue snaking out to lick the last of the batter from his lips. 'I didn't see you there.'

'Mr West,' Alan returned, one of his eyebrows rising with cool and sarcastic reckoning. 'I've been sitting here the whole time.'

'So I see.' Cameron paced the ten steps to the refrigerator, swung the door on its hinges and poked his head into its cavernous depths. 'When did you get in?'

Alan tried not to watch as Grandma's self-appointed favourite bent down to search the bottom shelf, but he wasn't trying very hard. 'An hour ago,' he said as Cameron emerged from the fridge with a can of beer clutched in each soot-stained hand.

Cameron turned around and caught the narrowed eyes of Alan's gaze. 'Hey! Were you just looking at my ass?' he gasped, and then laughed out loud at the look of horror that passed across the younger man's face. 'Brew?' he grinned, proffering one of the cans.

'No,' Alan replied with the faintest hint of surly in his voice. He glanced furtively at his grandmother and found her observing them both disapprovingly. 'No, _thank you,'_ he corrected as she turned tut-tutting away.

Cameron followed Alan's glance, but Grandma was engrossed again in the lemon cake and Cam guessed she was making it for the grandson that looked the most like he'd just sucked a lemon. Of all the Tracy brothers, the youngest was simultaneously the easiest to read and the most difficult.

Cameron grinned with his usual annoying charm, cracked open a can with one hand and shoved the spare into the pocket of his coveralls. 'For later,' he said, because the Firefly still needed cleaning and in all his time on the island the equipment had never once showed any inclination to be cleaning itself. He chugged back a mouthful from the open can and swallowed loudly, resisting the urge to let loose a heartfelt belch. If there was one thing Grandma Tracy didn't appreciate, it was the overt display of bodily functions.'New shirt?' he said to Alan after the beer had settled cold and foaming in his gut.

'No,' Alan lied.

'Really?' Cameron swallowed more beer. 'I don't think I've seen it before. How was Fuji? Did you place?'

'Fifth,' Alan told him, annoyed because Cameron was insisting on being nice.

'Sorry,' said Cameron, knowing that Alan had wanted to place, but relieved to find that the sour face wasn't all on his own behalf. 'But hey,' Cam brightened up, 'that still means you qualified, right?'

Alan nodded, his cheeks flushing pink to match the colour of his shirt. 'We passed the trials. Not as good as we wanted, but the team's in.' Despite his desire to remain surly, Alan was doing a bad job of keeping his pride off his face.

'Great!' Cameron stepped over the to the table and clapped a congratulatory hand on Alan's shoulder, knowing how much it would annoy him but wanting a reason to get up close and personal. 'Listen,' he said, oblivious to the soot stains he'd smeared on Alan's shirt and leaning in close enough to ensure Grandma Tracy couldn't hear. 'I know you're uncomfortable with this thing we got going on between us, but your Grandma's a woman, Alan. She's got _needs.'_

* * *

They hadn't got too wet in their dash from the hangar to the car, though the wind had caught the tails of their coats and flipped Scott's tie over his shoulder while he was waiting for his father to slide into the back. The door locks clicked loudly into place as they settled into their seats, and Scott shared a glance with his father as they fastened their seatbelts.

Captain Ochre started the car and eased them slowly between the airport's outer buildings. The sky outside the vehicle appeared darker through the tinted grey of the windows, the world made colder by the way the wind was throwing rain against the glass. It was hard to believe it was 9.30 in the morning – it felt like five in the afternoon, the feeling compounded by the fact that it had been bright sunshine when they'd left home, and the fact that it _was_ five in the afternoon, back on Tracy Island.

At least it was warm in the back of the car, and dry, and the smell of new leather and cleaning fluid was winning the war against the odour of wet dog that Scott knew was coming off his hair. There was a hint of berry coming from the upholstery, as though somebody had been eating candy in the car a week ago, or more, or maybe Scott was only imagining it. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a paper bag, un-crumpled it and removed a green-wrapped object. 'Mint?' he said and offered the bag to his father, re-crumpling the paper when his father declined.

Scott unwrapped the candy and placed it in his mouth, staring fixedly at the back of Captain Ochre's head as his tongue curled around the sweet. The officer was seated on the front side of what Scott guessed was a bulletproof partition, as far removed from his passengers as he could get. Ochre's hat was off, and Scott's gaze fixated on the backs of the man's ears – two pale pink rinds of meat standing out in stark contrast against the short dark cut of his hair. Ochre turned his head as he checked the traffic prior to a merge and Scott was treated to a full profile, the officer's cheekbones prominent in the grey light that filtered through the windshield.

The mint rolled across Scott's tongue as he moved his gaze away from the back of the Captain's head and looked at the streets through the rain-spotted windows. His father seemed absorbed in the urban scenery – or maybe he was only looking at the rain as it trickled down the glass. _Brains really needed to work on the flavour on these things,_ Scott thought as he worked at sucking off the candy coating, swallowing only when his teeth hit the metal core.

'Dad,' Scott said when the mint had gone grudgingly down, 'what if they're telling the truth?'

Jeff turned to look at him, his grey eyes reflecting both surprise and irritation in the same intense gaze. 'What?'

'It's a possibility we need to consider,' Scott said, knowing it was the last thing that his father wanted to hear. 'What if it _is_ Virgil? What if, somehow – '

'Scott.' Jeff's lips tightened, his jaw clenching as though he were trying to keep something in. 'I thought this was settled.'

A crease appeared between Scott's eyebrows. 'How could it be settled when we've never had any answers? We _still_ don't have any – '

'You know what I mean,' Jeff snapped. 'You're brother's gone. We buried him. We buried him two goddamned years ago and who the hell are Spectrum to dredge this up all over again?'

'Father – '

'Don't hope for it,' Jeff said, cutting him off. He glanced at the back of Ochre's head and then looked back at Scott. 'If Virgil were alive,' he said, lowering his voice, 'if he'd been _anywhere_ on this planet since the day he – ' Jeff's throat closed around his words and he tried to swallow, only the spit wouldn't come. 'He'd have come home,' he grated at last, his voice gravelled and dry. 'He'd have found a way home. _'_

'What if he couldn't come home?' Scott persisted, ignoring the way his father's eyes had hardened into shards of cold, grey ice. 'What if there was something preventing him – '

'Scott,' Jeff warned.

'But Dad – '

' _Stop!'_

Scott flinched. He turned to look at the back of Ochre's head, but if the officer had heard Jeff's outburst there was no sign of it showing on the pink rinds of his ears.

'Scott,' Jeff said. There were only inches separating them on the seat, but it felt as though they'd never been so far apart. 'Son…'

'What happened to us, Dad?'

'What was inevitable since the day I sent my boy to his death.'

'No.' Scott's lips twisted grimly with bitterness and pain. 'No. _I_ did that. I sent him in. And I made him stay in. And there's not one day that doesn't go by that I don't – '

'Son. Don't.'

'I need to, Dad. I _want_ to. I have to lay blame because it's the only way I'm going to get past it. It's like – '

Scott closed his mouth, his hands resting on his thighs and his fingers pressing tight into the flesh. 'It's like we've been sleepwalking since the day we came home without him. Pretending it didn't happen. Pretending nobody was to blame. And you know what? There _is_ somebody to blame. And… s _hit.'_ Scott stared down at his hands, at the knuckles showing white beneath the skin. 'There's something inside me that needs to come out, Dad, but I can't let it out.' He turned and looked hard at his father. 'I'm _afraid_ to let it out.'

* * *

'Hey baby, I was wondering when you'd show.' Cameron dropped down from the cab of the Firefly, landing sure-footed on the hangar floor and somehow looking graceful despite the size-13 steel-capped workboots laced up to his ankles. Tin-Tin was always surprised by that grace, by the easy way that Cameron lived inside his own skin, and by the way that ease oozed so confidently out of every part of his tight, suntanned body.

'I thought Gordon would be helping with this.' Tin-Tin glanced around the hangar, more to keep her eyes off Cameron's bulging biceps than to look for Gordon – because even after years surrounded by Tracy men in every state of dress and undress, with this one she still had a tendency to stare.

'Nope,' Cam said, reaching a grimy hand out for the tablet Tin-Tin held in her grip. 'Gimme.'

'Cameron,' she said to him, enunciating each syllable carefully because she knew he liked it when she did that. Her accent, he regularly told her, turned him on. 'Where is Gordon?'

Cameron retracted his hand. 'Dunno. But he was in no fit state to be concentrating on clean-up.'

'Why? Did something happen? Did he get hurt on the rescue?'

Cameron shrugged. 'Spooked, more like. He was on the blower to John and – '

'He spoke to John?'

'Yeah. They're brothers. That's what they do.'

Tin-Tin stared up at him with her big, liquid eyes.

'What?' Cam asked when he saw the look on her face. 'Something wrong?'

'I don't know,' she said quietly. 'What did he say?'

'Who? Gordon?' Cameron looked down at her, her face pale and luminous beneath the bright hangar lights. 'Not much.' He wiped absently at his chin and deposited a streak of soot across his light brown stubble. 'John told him something about Spectrum, and something about the boss and Scott taking off, and – '

He stopped, because Tin-Tin wasn't looking at him anymore. She was focused on something far, far away.

'Uh,' Cam said, 'you wouldn't happen to know anything about why Spectrum called, would you?'

She continued to stare past him, the tablet slack in her hand and her teeth pressed so tight into her lip he could see it was going to leave a mark. 'Tin-Tin,' he asked, 'you okay?'

'He didn't want me to say anything.' She looked up at Cam, her eyes coming back into focus. 'Mr Tracy said it was a false alarm. He said it couldn't possibly be… and he's right… it couldn't _possibly_ be…'

'Couldn't possibly be what?'

'Nothing,' she told him, and she smiled a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. 'Nothing. Just a false alarm. Mr Tracy is right. And he'll be back soon and then we'll… we'll know…' The sentence faltered at the same speed as her smile.

'Okay,' Cam said, not understanding a word she said. 'You do what the boss-man told you and we'll worry about the rest later. Meanwhile,' he changed the subject, 'I need that tablet because I've got a diagnostic to run. Although,' he added somewhat belatedly and wincing as though he were in pain, 'I don't know how I'm going to manage on my own. I'm not feeling too good…' He breathed deep and said 'ouch' and then winced again. 'I must've hurt myself at the danger zone.'

'You're hurt?' she asked, her eyes moving to inspect the broad expanse of his chest. He'd taken off his shirt, the sleeves tied loosely around his waist and his undershirt damp with sweat and clinging to the muscled contours of his body. Soot stains were streaked in Rorschach patterns across the cotton fabric, and Tin-Tin folded the tablet against her chest, an unconscious barrier between herself and the suggestions that were jostling for attention in her head. A lock of hair came loose from behind her ear and drifted in slow motion onto her cheek, and she had to resist the impulse to toss her head to get it off her face.

'You hurt yourself on the rescue?' she asked him. 'Where?'

'Here.' Cameron took hold of her hand and pressed it against the fly of his workpants. 'Does this feel swollen to you?'

'No,' she said, pulling her hand away.

'Check again,' he said.

'Cameron,' she warned, 'I've told you.'

'It's definitely swollen,' he insisted, ignoring her warning and moving so close that she found herself backed up against the Firefly with nothing but the tablet between herself and his hot, soot-stained body. His hands found their way to her hips and he pulled her towards him, pelvis to pelvis, and so close she could smell the sweat that prickled damp across his skin. 'Feel that?' he asked. 'Must've got stung by a bee.'

'Not here,' she told him, turning her face away as he moved in to kiss her.

'Why not,' he breathed into her ear and kissing it instead.

'Because somebody might see...'

'So?' His teeth clamped down on her earlobe, making her wince in irritation and pull her head away.

'Don't,' she said. 'You know what I mean.'

Cameron sighed the sigh of the long-suffering. 'Alan already suspects.'

'But he only suspects. I don't need to rub his face in it.'

'Why not? He did it to you.'

Now it was Tin-Tin's turn to sigh. 'I've told you,' she said, acutely aware of Cameron's bee-sting still pressed firmly against her groin. 'Things were… difficult back then.' She looked up into Cameron's blue-green eyes. 'His brother died. He did a lot of stupid things. We all did…' _…because grief had made them crazy..._ '…he was hurting.'

'You were hurting too.' Cameron kissed her then, his lips warm and his tongue slow and his hands moving from her hips to her ass as he pulled her close and crushed the tablet between them.

Tin-Tin gave up the fight and closed her eyes. Cameron West, she had discovered, wasn't like any of the Tracys – he was no gentleman. Cameron was rough and hard and shameless.

'Is that what this Spectrum stuff is about?' he asked when he let her up for air.

She opened her eyes and looked at him, her eyes big and wide and greener even than his own, and maybe her lips quivered though she tried hard to stop them. 'It's going to be dredged up all over again Cam, and I don't know how any of them are going to survive it.'

Cameron said nothing, his body hot against hers and his lips smeared with her lipstick. 'Okay,' he said at last. 'We won't rub it in.' He shifted suggestively against her. 'Although,' he grinned, 'it couldn't make Alan hate me any worse.'

'He doesn't hate you,' she said, her fingers clasped tight around the tablet that was still trapped between them.

'My _god_ woman, are you blind?' Cameron's head tilted back and he laughed. 'Have you seen the way he looks at me? I was ticklin' his grandma just now and he looked like he was getting ready to tear my nutsack out by going in through the nose!'

Despite herself, Tin-Tin smiled. 'He's jealous of how much Grandma loves you.'

'You can laugh.' Cameron grew sober. 'You don't have to sleep with one eye open at night.'

She grinned indulgently, one hand reaching up to wipe the lipstick from his mouth.

'Oh no,' he said to her seriously, biting at her fingers so that she pulled her hand away. 'You sleep the sleep of the innocent, with your mouth hanging open and teeny-tiny snores coming out of your teeny-tiny nose.'

'I don't sleep with my mouth open.' She slid from his embrace, all trace of her indulgence evaporating at the suggestion.

'Yes,' he grinned. 'You do.'

'I _don't!'_ she snapped, slamming him with the back of the tablet. _'And I don't snore!'_

'Damn, girl,' he called out as she huffed away, 'you most definitely do!'

Tin-Tin flipped the bird at him over her shoulder and Cameron grinned ruefully, rubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand. He watched as she flounced across the deck, admiring the way her butt-cheeks seemed the very embodiment of her irritation as she stomped out of the hangar. And then he muttered _'shit,'_ because she'd stomped away with the tablet and he really needed to run that diagnostic.

* * *

Missy was getting too big for this, but somebody had to take the alligator for a swim and nobody else was brave enough to do it when he was away. Alan followed as Missy slid her way towards the swimming pool, the lead stretched taut between them as they wove between pot plants and deck chairs and a half-drunk glass of something sweet that somebody had left beside a lounger maybe a day or so ago, judging from the trail of ants that led from the glass and back into the shrubbery.

Missy moved unblinking between the chair legs, stopping suddenly in her tracks and sniffing at something that the wind was bringing in from the sea. The sun had vanished behind a bank of cumulus that was building over the sea, and in the early twilight Alan thought he saw lightning flash on the horizon and wondered if Missy could smell the ozone in the air, or if maybe alligators could smell anything at all.

'Come on, girl.' Alan jiggled warily on the leash, making sure to keep a respectable distance. Missy wasn't big enough or mean enough to snap off a limb, but he'd learnt the hard way that her teeth were plenty sharp enough to draw blood. 'C'mon,' he said in the sort of high-pitched voice he usually reserved for puppy dogs and pussy cats and the occasional canary. 'Smell the water?'

Missy snuffed on the air, her eyelids blinking in a gesture that Alan could only interpret as mild excitement. 'Attagirl,' he said as the reptile started moving again, her stomach scraping as loud as sandpaper over the cement tile. She was too fat, he knew, but it was a concerted effort on the part of the brothers to keep her that way – if she was never hungry, they had collectively reasoned, she would never be tempted to eat them.

'That thing's not getting in here,' said an unexpected voice from the pool.

'Huh?' Alan jumped just a little bit out of his skin – it was tense work walking a dinosaur. You had to be ready for anything. 'What are you doing out here?'

Gordon kicked his feet to the surface of the water so that he was floating on his back. 'I'm baking,' he said very slowly and deliberately and with more than a hint of sarcasm, 'a cake.'

Alan scowled. 'Don't talk to me about cake.'

'Why the mad face?' Gordon drifted closer to the edge. 'You come last at Fuji?'

'No.' Alan's scowl remained planted across the peaches and cream of his cherubic face and completely ruined the whole 'grandma's little boy' thing he had going on. 'We placed fifth,' he grumped. 'No injuries no accidents no dramas, if you don't count Hideki's foul-up on the eighth lap which nearly cost us the whole season.'

'Jeez. Smile or something,' Gordon said. 'You're making it hard for me to figure out if you're happy or mad. Foul-up aside, this is good, right?'

'Yeah.' Alan's scowl cracked, a smile creeping grudgingly across his face that stopped short of a full-blown beam. 'Yeah, it's good. It's _great,_ actually.' Missy tugged on the lead and forced him to follow as she waddled towards the water's edge. 'Better get out,' he said as he unleashed the alligator, 'because Missy's getting in.'

Gordon heaved himself out of the pool, turning midway through the manoeuvre so that he was sitting on the edge with his feet dangling in the water and drops running in rivulets along the contours of his body. He brushed a hand through the copper of his hair, shorter now and slicked away from his face.

'That thing's revolting,' Gordon said as Missy disappeared bonelessly over the edge of the pool. There was a muted splash, a soft, slimy _plunk,_ and the beast sank to the bottom of the water and lay there, big and brown and ugly against the turquoise blue of the tile.

'I know.' Alan sat down catty-corner to Gordon and dipped his bare feet into the water.

'She better not shit in there.'

'She will.'

Gordon shook his head and a rain of chlorinated water spattered onto the tiles. 'You need to get rid of her.'

'I know.' The alligator had already grown larger than a pygmy version was supposed to, and there was no telling when her reptilian expansion would stop. Probably never, the way they all kept feeding her.

'Kyrano has a recipe,' Gordon suggested helpfully. 'Shish kebab, I think.'

'Gordon, we are not eating her.'

'No, not _us._ Kyrano!'

Alan laughed. 'Oh god, don't give him ideas. Remember the python story?' Jeff had loved to tell them that one when they were kids – it made sure they always treated Kyrano with an amplified sense of respect. Because, as their father liked to point out at the most inopportune of moments, if Kyrano could eat snakes then he could eat children too, and Jeff had more than enough of those to spare.

'Anyway,' Alan said as he stared at the shish kebab in question, 'you know I can't get rid of her. It would be the nail in the coffin.'

'What coffin?' Gordon kicked water at his brother to make sure he had his attention. 'Al, that relationship is buried already. The ship has sunk. The fat lady has sung. The bridges have been _burned_ – '

'Shuddup,' Alan cut in, wiping water from his face and glaring at Gordon across the corner of the pool.

' – the Titanic,' Gordon continued relentlessly, 'has hit the 'berg and gone _down,_ and Tin-Tin isn't going to give a damn if you get rid of a reptile she gave you ten fucking thousand years ago back when you were in love.' There was an emphasis on the 'love' that suggested Gordon had found the entire escapade entirely nauseating.

'Yeah, well.' Alan swiped water from the blond curls of his hair and turned his attention morosely to the predator lurking at the bottom of the pool. Missy's tail swished lethargically in the depths, her body distorted by the ripples that Gordon was kicking up – all of which only served to emphasise how truly revolting she was. 'I guess I'm not ready yet to let her go.'

'Her who? Missy or Tin-Tin?'

'Tin-Tin, you dick.'

'Then let me help you.' Gordon's feet moved lazily in the pool. 'They're fucking, you know.'

'Christ, Gordon. Do you mind?'

'I said I wanted to help.'

'Rubbing my nose in it is hardly helping.'

'Yes it is.' Gordon grinned crookedly. 'It's called shock therapy. Or anti-avoidance therapy. Or something.'

'You're an asshole, not a psychiatrist.'

Gordon snorted. 'No argument there. But I figure it's time the band-aid came off. Tin-Tin's moved on, Al. You screwed up.'

'I can't expect any sympathy out of you.' Alan kicked at the water. 'You like him.'

'Yeah,' Gordon said. 'I do.'

'Fuck.' Alan's feet stopped moving in the pool. _'Everybody_ likes him,' he whined with his best pout on. 'Dad likes him, Grandma likes him – '

'Grandma _loves_ him,' Gordon interjected.

' – _Tin-Tin_ likes him – '

'Tin-Tin's fucking him,' Gordon corrected.

'I hate you,' Alan said.

'I know.'

They laughed, and Gordon leaned his hands back against the tile and carefully appraised his youngest brother. 'But seriously,' he said as he kicked his feet out into the water.

'Piss off.'

The scowl had reappeared on Alan's face but Gordon pushed on regardless. 'You need to cut the guy some slack, Al. If Cam wasn't around to take the load you wouldn't be back on the circuit.'

'If that fat-headed moronic muscle-bound lunk wasn't around I wouldn't _have_ to get back on the circuit.'

'You mean that?'

'Yes. No. I don't know.' Alan stared down at the alligator in the pool. 'His big fat head is always in my face. And the way Tin-Tin looks at him…'

'Like he's meat on a hook and she can't wait to baste and barbeque him?'

'Who's side are you on anyway?'

'Who me? Switzerland?' Gordon grinned good-naturedly at his brother across the pool. 'Get over it. Tin-Tin _never_ looked at you like that.'

'Yes she did.'

Alan said it so seriously that Gordon was stunned into silence.

'Changing the subject,' Alan said, ignoring his brother's incredulous stare. 'You never answered my question.'

'What question?'

'What are you doing out here?'

Gordon's feet stopped swirling in the water. As if on cue a rumble of thunder sounded faintly from the gathering clouds, and a gust of wind blew in cool from the ocean, kicking leaves ahead of it and raising goosebumps on the exposed surfaces of his skin. 'Spectrum have been in contact.'

'What?' Alan said, and suddenly things weren't so funny anymore. 'What happened?'

Gordon said nothing. He stared towards the horizon, and lightning flashed faint, and very far away. 'Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched?'

Alan studied his brother's face in the fading light. 'No. Why. Do you?'

'Sometimes.' Gordon turned to meet his brother's gaze and he smiled, a sick sort of smile like he was about to throw up. 'I get this feeling, like we've been on somebody's 'most wanted' list ever since – ' There was another spark of lightning, closer and brighter and Gordon paused, counting the seconds between the flash and the bang. 'Twelve kilometres,' he said when the thunder had rumbled slowly into silence.

'Spectrum haven't been watching us,' Alan said. 'Or you. We made sure.'

'I know.' Gordon got to his feet. 'Forget it. I'm being paranoid. And this phone call has just… just forget it.' He walked to the nearest lounger, grabbed hold of his towel and rubbed briskly at his skin as though he was trying to rub a layer away.

Alan pulled his toes from the water, the movement making Missy shift on the bottom of the pool. She swivelled slowly in the water so that she was facing him, her dark beady eyes staring blankly up through the ripples left in his wake. 'This phone call,' Alan said, getting to his feet and watching as Gordon towelled his anger away, his brother's bones moving beneath the skin and the outline of his ribs visible as the muscles moved smoothly over them. 'It's, maybe it's, you know…' Alan floundered over the words. 'Maybe it's bringing back memories.'

Gordon stopped towelling and turned to look at his brother. 'Is that your asshole way of telling me I have post-traumatic stress? Now who's the psychiatrist?'

'Gordon, c'mon. That's not fair.'

'Life isn't fair.' Gordon stared at him across the patio, with the towel crushed hard in his hand. He was leaner than he'd been since his Olympic years, his muscles tight against his frame and all the scars of his life drawn in silver across the surface of his skin. The worst of them stretched across the skin of his abdomen, where a shard of steel had torn halfway through his body when the WASP hydrofoil had blown apart. To Alan it looked like a star, or like a sun gone supernova, rays of silver skin radiating from a central, twisted core.

'Yeah,' Gordon was saying. 'You're right, Al. You're absolutely right. Maybe there's just no coming back from seeing your brother burned up inside a ball of green fucking light.'

'Gordon…. Shit. I'm sorry. That's not what I – '

'That's not what you meant? Well what _did_ you mean, Al? What?'

Alan stared at him, with the wind kicking up around them and the lightning flickering closer over the sea.

'Forget it.' Gordon turned his back to Alan and attended roughly to his towelling, his posture displaying yet another series of scars. Surgical, this time, lines as straight as railroad tracks cutting through the tanned surface of his skin. They must have hurt, but Alan had been young and dumb when Gordon's world had been torn apart, and he couldn't remember that he'd ever thought to ask.

Gordon dropped the towel and shrugged a t-shirt over his head. 'Listen,' he said, turning around. 'I'm sorry. It's just… this Spectrum thing. Maybe you're right. Maybe I can't let it go.'

'It's okay,' Alan said.

'No, it's not okay. It's making me crazy. Because how can I let it go if they're always there, looking over our shoulders? We thought we were done with them, but turns out they've _never_ been done with us. And this phone call is just the start.'

'The start of what?' Alan asked. It was darker suddenly, the clouds growing thicker and taller and blotting out what was left of the day. 'Have you considered,' he continued cautiously, like a blind man treading over ice, 'that this phone call might be some kind of closure?'

'This isn't closure,' Gordon said, and for a moment Alan thought he saw fear pass across his brother's face. 'This is the start of something new.'


	6. five

**zero point**

 _five_

* * *

It was morning, Virgil supposed, judging from the way the overhead lights suddenly brightened, and from the food tray that slid quietly through the flap beneath his cell door. Virgil didn't sit up to look at it. Didn't move from his position in the bed, because getting up would mean facing the reality of another day trapped in the confines of this stark, white box. And besides, he wasn't a breakfast person anyway and when were they going to figure that out and stop shoving toast and porridge and shitty sausages beneath the frickin' door?

Virgil pulled the blanket closer around his chin. It wasn't cold in the box with the air circulating softly through the vent in the ceiling, but the blanket gave him something to hold on to, and it was the only shield between himself and the ever-present eyes that watched from the other side of the two-way mirror. Just thinking about those eyes made him curl in closer on himself, with his back to the glass and the smell of cold toast and sausage swirling through the room and making him want to throw up.

He dozed. Or maybe he drifted completely off again, because the next thing the door was opening and the doctor was in the room, talking to him and calling him 'Mr Tracy' and fuck that was annoying.

'Good morning Mr Tracy,' the doctor said, and Virgil heard the door sliding shut and the soft beep of the electronic lock that signalled the bolt had slid back into place.

'You haven't eaten your breakfast.' The doctor sounded disappointed, as if it were the first time it had happened instead of being, oh, say, the sixty-fifth day Virgil had ignored the breakfast tray – if you counted your days by the number of breakfasts you didn't eat. The doctor's accent was Australian, but somewhere along the way he'd picked up some English tones to his vowels along with the annoying habit of stating the bleeding obvious, and he followed his first piercing observation with the equally insightful 'Not getting up today, I see,' which served no purpose other than to make Virgil grit his teeth with irritation.

'Mr Tracy?'

 _For Christs' sake._ Virgil threw the blanket off and swung his legs over the side of the bed, his bare feet coming to rest on the cold tile of the floor. He leant his elbows on his knees and scrubbed his hands across his face, his fingers pushing into the uncombed curls of his hair and staying there.

The doctor picked up the breakfast tray from the floor and placed it on the bed beside him. 'Is there something else you'd prefer to eat?' he asked when Virgil tilted his head to look up at him. 'I could put in a request.' The doctor smiled, trying to make friends. 'Doctor's orders.'

Virgil sniffed, got up without answering, shuffled sluggishly to the head and undid the velcro of the pants he'd been issued with. No zips or buttons or elastic were allowed inside this cozy little hole, and if he ever got out of here Virgil never wanted to hear the excruciating sound of shredding velcro again. He aimed a steady stream into the toilet bowl, hitched his pants back onto his hips when he was done, and leaned forward to watch as the water drained from the head. And when that was done he turned and sat himself down on the stainless steel bowl, slumped back against the plain white wall and looked up at the doctor.

'I've brought you a change of clothes,' the doctor said, realising finally he was going to get nothing out of Virgil Tracy today. 'Shoes and socks. And a razor.' He indicated a pile of clothing that he'd placed next to the food tray on the bed. 'You're having visitors.'

Virgil slowly scrutinised the clothing – shirt, pants and sneakers, just as the doctor had said, and a battery-operated shaver resting on top of the neatly-folded pile. 'A bit formal for a torture squad,' Virgil said, surprising the doctor with his words.

'We don't torture people,' the doctor replied too quickly and too defensively.

Virgil raised his arm. 'Funny,' he said, displaying a series of thin scars that had been scored across his skin, the most recent with the stitches still in it. 'Because that's what it feels like.'

The doctor's eyes followed the tracks of the scars and he swallowed. 'I'm sorry about that. But it was necessary.'

Virgil lowered his arm. 'Necessary,' he repeated, and he smiled. 'And next time you decide it's necessary?' He turned to stare at the mirror that filled one wall of his cell. 'Will your goons come back in here and hold me down?' He turned back to face the doctor. 'Or am I expected to just sit here and take it?'

The doctor met the challenge in Virgil's eyes, and to his credit he didn't turn away. 'I can only tell you, Mr Tracy, that everything Spectrum does is in the interest of planetary security. I'm sorry if this has caused you any pain – '

'Pain.' Virgil laughed softly and leaned his head back against the wall.

' – or discomfort.' The doctor ignored Virgil's mirth. 'Rest assured everything that has happened has been necessary.' He turned to the bed and picked up the untouched breakfast tray. 'Now,' he said, turning back and giving Virgil his most reassuring smile. 'Is there anything particular we can get for you?'

* * *

'… _.ninety-eight…'_

Scarlet heaved his chin past the bar, biceps straining as he held himself poised for a count of ten, then slowly lowered himself back to starting.

'… _.ninety-nine…'_

Scarlet heaved again, sweat greasing his palms and his fingers cramping around the bar as he pulled his body upwards.

'…nnh…' he groaned as he came back down to starting, his feet hovering millimetres from the floor and his arms burning with the simple effort of hanging there. He dangled for a moment, not wanting to make that last effort, his muscles aching and his eyes stinging and the sweat plastering his hair to his head, and he grunted again, louder and longer and harder as he dragged himself up one last time, because if there was one thing Paul Metcalfe couldn't stand it was leaving a thing unfinished. Promises had to be kept and goals had to be met, even if that goal was as simple as one hundred chin-ups in under five minutes.

' _A hundred,'_ he grunted out loud, not caring how he sounded because the Cloudbase gym was deserted. _'Unh,'_ he exhaled, his fingers slipping from the bar as he dropped lightly down to the mat. He was sweating, his back and his armpits soaked with it, and he lifted the front of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his neck and from his face, appreciating the draft of cool air that wafted across the flat planes of his exposed stomach.

Scarlet smoothed his shirt back into place and stood there breathing for a moment, feeling the blood pumping through his veins as he stared out the wide windows at the open sky beyond. The North Sea drifted six kilometres below his feet as Cloudbase powered towards the coast of England, but right now the ocean was obscured by a bright layer of cloud, the sun blinding as it bounced off the endless drift of white. As he watched, the silhouette of an SPJ arced overhead as it dropped off the edge of the flightdeck above him and fell smoothly down towards the cloud on its way to London. In a few minutes the passenger jet would disappear into that blinding bank of white, and in a few hours it would be returning with two men on board that Scarlet hadn't seen since the Faulkner labs had imploded two years ago, the younger of which likely still wanted to strangle the life out of him. Scarlet's lips quirked with sardonic reckoning – Scott Tracy he could handle. It was the calm, quiet anger of Jeff Tracy that scared the shit out of him.

Scarlet turned from the window and returned to the mats. His body was his instrument – whether that instrument belonged entirely to himself or not was a whole other matter.

* * *

The boardroom of Spectrum's London HQ was a standard affair with four windowless walls painted a shade of grey that bordered onto blue – or maybe it was blue bordering onto grey. Colonel White always found it irritating that the HQ colour scheme occupied one of those amorphous borderlands between one colour and the next – colours, like people, needed to make a damn decision and stick to it. The nondescript carpet was equally irritating, about a shade darker than the walls and still hovering somewhere between blue and grey. Fortunately, the boring landscape of grey-not-grey was broken by the boardroom furniture – as Spectrum's concession to history and to all the secret organisations that had come before it, an over-large oak table salvaged from the dismantling of Joint Intelligence was the centrepiece of the room, the rich patina of age and tradition incongruous with the unidentifiable colour palette of the walls that surrounded it.

Colonel White's guests were already seated at that table, their cups of coffee half-drunk and resting on the unprotected wood, and a tray of sweet biscuits sat untouched just a few inches out of their reach. White's eyes picked out Oreos among the selection, and he awarded some mental brownie points to the administration officer who had sourced them, no doubt thinking to make their American guests feel more at home. But Colonel White hated the damn things – a six-month stint at White Sands thirty years ago had left him with an unwavering conviction that Oreos were nothing if not the devil's handiwork.

The Tracys turned to look when White walked into the room, Tracy senior rising to his feet to step forward. 'Colonel White,' Jeff Tracy said, slipping his large, warm hand into White's. The handshake was firm but not forceful, though the look in the man's eyes held another kind of force altogether.

'Colonel Tracy,' White returned. 'Thank you for coming.'

'Please,' Tracy senior said. 'I haven't gone by the rank of Colonel for decades.'

'Of course,' White said, meeting the man's gaze. Colonel Jefferson Tracy may no longer have wanted to be referred to by his rank, but the echoes of his military career were still plainly visible in the steel-grey flint of his eyes.

Tracy's son had risen to his feet during this exchange and he now stepped forward, his handshake a copy of his father's, if a bit firmer and perhaps a bit more meaningful. White looked into his intense blue eyes and said: 'I expect you prefer we don't call you Captain.'

'That is correct, sir,' the younger Tracy replied with a crisp military bearing that was USAF through and through and decried his wish to not be formally acknowledged for it.

'Of course,' White said, moving to the chair at the head of the table. 'Well.' He watched as the Tracys resumed their seats. 'That will make it difficult for me to differentiate between the two Mr Tracys in conversation.' It was a weak attempt at flippancy, an attempt to all be friends, but it fell on unfriendly ears.

'I'm sure you'll do your best,' Tracy senior said, smiling wanly and not offering any concessions to informality.

White smiled in return, studying them carefully as he waited for the rest of the participants to arrive – Captains Ochre and Magenta, and the scientists who'd been appointed to the project after the incident at Faulkner's. It had been difficult replacing Masters, but Drs Ainsworth and Mackinnon had proven capable – even if it had taken both their brains to match Masters' singular intellect.

'Ah,' White said as the heavy boardroom door swung silently open. The colour scheme might have been insufferably modern at Spectrum HQ, but there were still concessions to traditional architecture – wooden doors were hung on well-oiled hinges inside a building crafted out of century-old stone, the large, drafty rooms over-arched by far too-high ceilings. Colonel White appreciated the old-school fixtures and the feeling of space the building afforded – they were a welcome relief from the low ceilings and sterile pressed metal of Cloudbase. He motioned the new arrivals to their chairs and returned his attention to his guests.

'Allow me to introduce Dr Lesley Ainsworth and Dr David Mackinnon,' he said by way of introduction. 'Drs Ainsworth and Mackinnon are specialists attached to Spectrum's Research and Development arm.' Colonel White glanced over to the Spectrum agents who had taken their seats at the far end of the table. 'And Captains Ochre and Magenta,' he said. 'Captain Ochre you've already met, of course. Captain's Magenta and Ochre were involved with your son Gordon's situation, and they understand the circumstances well.'

'Gordon's 'situation'?' Scott Tracy turned to look bluntly at the two officers. 'You mean his incarceration.'

Ochre expressionlessly returned Scott's gaze, but Magenta at least had sense enough to look chagrined. 'That wasn't how it was,' Magenta said, his words accented with a faded New York twang. 'He was – '

'Captain,' White cautioned, because Magenta's mouth had an irritating propensity for engaging before his brain did. Magenta was a good officer but he wasn't military, and he had a tendency to struggle with discipline. Colonel White turned his attention back to Scott Tracy – he could see the resentment visible in the clenching of the young man's jaw and wondered if International Rescue's Field Commander was going to give him trouble.

'If you will allow us to explain,' White said, 'you will understand why it was necessary to quarantine Gordon until we could be satisfied that he was – ' White pursed his lips. He'd been wrestling with this moment for days, ever since he'd decided that the only way to get to the bottom of the Virgil Tracy mystery was to bring his father in. And now that the moment was here…

'Until you were satisfied my son was what?' Jeff Tracy said. He'd sat quietly during the preamble, his eyes moving carefully from one face to the next as he surveyed the people around the table. Colonel White looked shrewdly at him, assessing him, probing him with that indefinable sixth sense that had once seen White negotiate his way around the tables of war, and wondered just how far he could push him. And just how many cards he could safely lay on the table.

White cautiously laid down the first card from his pack. 'Until we were sure that your son was human.'

'What?' The exclamation came from Scott. Jeff Tracy merely sat there, his entire body gone still as he gauged the Colonel with his own sixth sense.

'Earth is at war,' Colonel White told them, deciding to put all his cards on the table. If he wanted cooperation from Jeff Tracy and his son, then it was time to lay down the whole blasted hand.

* * *

The noise from the electric shaver was ridiculous. The tiny motor whirred steadily inside its flimsy case, the vibrations transferring directly from the plastic and through to Virgil's fingers as he raised the shaver to his face. He had about three days of growth peppering his chin, and the spinning blades cut into the stubble with all the noise and enthusiasm of a combine harvester attacking a field of full-grown grain. Virgil had a memory, suddenly, of harvest time on his grandfather's farm. The smell of grease and diesel as the harvester powered up in a cloud of blue exhaust, the great blades slicing through sun-ready stalks of wheat and releasing the sticky, sweet smell of chlorophyll to mix with the smoke and the dust.

'Those were the days,' Virgil murmured. He stared at the blank white wall of his cell and slid the shaver across the plane of his cheek, listening as the whiskers died their loud and unexpected deaths. They might even have been screaming as the blades cut them down. Virgil stopped the shaver and stood listening for a while. Nope. The only screaming going on was the screaming inside his head.

The shaver recommenced its whirring and Virgil lifted it again to his cheek. There were other memories there, hidden behind the simple act of taking the hair off his face. The smell of cut grass. The sound of trees falling. The tangle of vines on Tracy Island when the family first arrived on its rocky shores, and how the spines of the creepers sliced your fingers when you tugged at them, and how bad it stung when the sap mixed with the blood from your hands and the sweat got into the cuts in your palms.

The shaver moved methodically across his chin, biting into the stubble with relentless efficiency. Virgil closed his eyes. There was something moving in Virgil's inner jungle. He could see it, out beyond the groves of palms and the creeping vines and the damp, dense undergrowth of ferns and hibiscus, and it was bright, and green, and shining.

* * *

To their credit, the Tracy's remained quiet as Colonel White laid out the events of the past few years – Captain Black's mission to Mars and the unintended destruction of the Mysteron city. The commencement of the war between Earth and race of beings who existed outside of three-dimensional space. The relentless cat-and-mouse battle of wits that Spectrum was no closer to ending now than when it had first begun. There had been moments when White was talking, moments when identical frowns had creased across the Tracys' brows because, put bluntly like that, with the war reduced to its simplest and most impossible terms, even Colonel White had to admit to the fantastical, preposterous nature of the situation. And if the Tracys chose not to believe what he was telling them, then Spectrum had taken one more step closer to their inevitable defeat.

Colonel White rose from his chair and straightened his uniform. He needed water after all that talking, and a carafe and glasses were waiting ready on the sideboard. He busied himself pouring, listening to the sound of water funnelling into the glass, and to people breathing and shifting quietly in their seats behind him. A throat cleared. Magenta, probably, because he always had a hard time sitting still. White raised the water to his lips and swallowed – he had yet to explain the device, and Jeff Tracy still needed to know what had happened to his son.

White replaced the glass on the board and turned back to face the table. 'Are there any questions at this point,' he inquired of his audience, because the silence was too profound and it was getting on his nerves.

Scott Tracy laughed. A short, soft bark that expressed very well the ludicrousness of the situation, and how very close to the edge he and his father were skating. 'What you're saying,' Scott Tracy said as he turned his intense gaze on the Colonel, 'is that the world has been under assault by an alien force, by these so-called Mysterons, for what, four years now? _And nobody knows about it?'_

'Difficult as it must seem,' Colonel White said as he returned to his seat, 'that is correct. It is a war of nerves, played out in secret right across the planet. And until Professor Masters developed his device, it was a war we had no hope of winning.'

'The 'device'.' Scott sat back in his chair. 'So that's what we're calling it. That ' _device'_ ,' he said, looking at the faces around the table to make sure they were all listening, 'killed my brother. And it maimed another.'

'That was an accident,' Dr Ainsworth interrupted. Until now she'd been all but invisible, blinking her pale eyes beneath a helmet of straight, dark hair. As a physicist Ainsworth actively bucked the stereotype, possessing the short and pillowy body of a fairytale farmer's wife and a face that had started a downward slide into the folds of her neck. But White considered she must have been quite attractive once – back before she sat herself down at a desk and discovered cupcakes and cappuccinos.

'An accident,' Scott said directly to Ainsworth, 'that had the potential to bring down an entire city and kill millions.'

'Which is why we've reconstructed the device in Australia,' Mackinnon told him, 'as far away from a population centre as possible.'

'What?' Scott turned to look at him incredulously. Mackinnon was one of those awkward men whose body had grown too fast and too soon and his motor neurons were still waiting for their chance to catch up. He could have been thirty or he could have been fifty, it was difficult to tell from a face that possessed the kind of pale and pasty pallor that only a lifetime spent avoiding the sun could produce.

'You mean you're still working on that thing?' Scott snapped at Mackinnon, and White was not surprised to see the scientist visibly recoil at Tracy's tone. 'People _died!'_

'Masters died,' Colonel White corrected. 'We still don't know what happened to Virgil.'

Scott turned to face Colonel White. 'We know exactly what happened to Virgil,' he said. 'It was on the recordings that your agents illegally confiscated. Not to mention the fact that Gordon was _there – '_

'Gordon said he watched Virgil burn,' Magenta said unexpectedly. White should have known the officer wouldn't be able to keep his mouth shut. 'It was the last thing he remembered.'

Scott spun towards him. _'How do you know that?'_

Magenta shrugged blandly in the face of Scott's anger. 'I was there when Gordon remembered it.'

Scott glared across the table as though Magenta was personally responsible for what had happened to his brothers, and White wondered if the man was about to lose control. He could only imagine how the two Tracys must be feeling, and he was acutely aware of the fact that he was about to make things worse.

'Whatever happened to Virgil,' Colonel White said, 'he wasn't burned. He – ' White found himself unexpectedly at a loss for words. These had been secrets he had been keeping for his country, and for his planet, and he'd been quite literally guarding them with his life. It was almost a painful thing to have to admit them – to civilians, no less – and he suddenly found himself wishing for a cup of strong tea. Or a glass of Tanqueray poured generously over ice.

'What are you trying to tell us, Colonel?' It was Jeff Tracy, his voice breaking into the unexpected silence.

Colonel White looked across the table at his officers. Ochre, true to form, sat quietly with no hint of expression visible on his face, but Magenta had straightened in his chair and there was apprehension in his eyes. White felt the same apprehension pass across his own face – once the Tracys understood the true nature of the Mysteron reality, there would be no taking it back.

'Colonel?'

'Of course.' Colonel White smiled a small apology and turned to Ainsworth. 'Doctor. If you would please explain.'

'Yes, sir.' Ainsworth blinked her eyes beneath the heavy fringe of her hair. 'After the incident,' she said with her not-unpleasant voice, 'and with Professor Masters unfortunately deceased, we had no way of understanding what exactly caused the original device to malfunction. Most of Masters' work disappeared along with the laboratory, so we've had to reconstruct his theories almost from scratch.'

She paused for a moment, maybe expecting a question from her audience, but when none were forthcoming she moistened her lips with her tongue and continued on. 'We commenced reconstruction at a new site, but for a long time we were fumbling around in the dark. Spectrum quarantined the original site, of course, but we took the precaution of leaving a security system active and set up an array of monitoring systems around the space that the lab had occupied – video, infra-red, radiation, particle spectrometers… You name it, if a cockroach sneezed in there, we wanted to know about it.' She smiled at her comment, but nobody else was in the mood for it. 'For two years the sphere remained inert with no signs of activity… until just over eight weeks ago, when this happened.'

She had a remote control gripped between her fingers, and a projector in the ceiling activated with a muted hum and threw a darkened image against the far wall. All eyes turned to look as the video displayed the pitch-black interior of the Faulkner sphere, the image pixelated and grainy as the infra-red cameras struggled to focus and the light sensors adjusted and readjusted to the darkness.

There was an abrupt explosion of light, and the screen blanked out.

'At that point,' Ainsworth said, 'the infra-red cameras overloaded. But fortunately the motion-sensors tripped the arc-lights and the closed-circuit cameras were able to capture this sequence.'

The feed changed, the image displaying a crumpled white form resting at the bottom of the sphere. White remembered the first time he'd seen that footage, and how long it had taken him to realise that the crumpled heap was actually a man. White's eyes slid to watch Jeff Tracy as he viewed the footage, and he recognised the same sense of dawning on his face, both Tracys leaning forward as the figure on the screen moved and the IR hazard suit became suddenly recognisable.

'What the hell…' Scott Tracy breathed.

The figure on the screen moved again, sluggishly, painfully, and White watched as Jeff Tracy's lips parted, his features creasing in confusion and shock and what White recognised as the faint, first glimmerings of hope. Jeff Tracy been a closed book until now, but it looked as though his stony façade was about to crack.

The figure moved again. Rolled over. Pushed itself laboriously into sitting, the gloved hands rising suddenly to the helmet. Now there was no mistaking the hazard suit, with the helping hand of the IR logo stamped in blue across the chest.

'My God,' Jeff Tracy said, believing it and not believing it all at the same time. 'How is this possible?'

The boardroom was filled with tense watchfulness, all eyes fixed on what was happening on the screen. Even Colonel White found himself with the air stilled in his chest, not wanting to destroy the unfolding of a miracle as the Tracys stared at the screen. White looked away. He was uncomfortable with what came next, and he would have liked to put his hands over his ears to block out the sound.

The figure on the screen fumbled at the fastenings on the helmet, but the gloves were too unwieldy, the seals too tight, and the panic was palpable in the frantic, jerky movements of the man on the screen. Finally the helmet slipped free in a moment of visible relief, the face now plainly visible to the lights and the cameras and to the audience watching in the boardroom. It was Virgil Tracy, unmistakably, and he gulped at the air the same way a parched man gulped down water, inhaling great draughts of it in painful heaving gasps as his fingers moved to the collar of the hazard suit, tearing it frantically away from his neck and his chest. And when he was done, when he had set himself free, and when he'd finally gulped down enough air, Virgil Tracy opened his mouth and screamed.

* * *

'I'll take over,' Captain Scarlet told the lieutenant who had taken the morning watch. He smiled at her from where he stood in the open doorway, trying to be friendly – but not too friendly. Scarlet wasn't in the market for entanglements. And besides, with her utilitarian haircut and her rough-around-the-edges demeanour, the lieutenant wasn't exactly his type.

'Yes, sir.' Lieutenant Indigo got up from her chair – she'd been assigned the colour-code after the second Indigo had been killed in action, and Scarlet hoped that no-one had been insensitive enough to point out to her that bad luck always came in threes.

Indigo had the electronic logbook in her hand and she busied herself logging out so that Scarlet could log in. 'Here you are, sir,' she said, handing him the tablet and making eye-contact as she did. Indigo matched him for height and her direct gaze was disarming – grey eyes so pale they were almost white looked levelly at him from beneath precisely plucked eyebrows, and at this distance she exuded a faint scent of peony, hinting that beneath the uniform she might not have been so utilitarian after all. Scarlet's mind threw up a vision of black lace panties and suspenders hiding under all that indigo kevlar, along with a high-riding balconette brassiere.

'Thank you,' he said, taking the tablet as she proffered it. 'Anything to report?'

'Everything's on the log, sir. The only event of note was while the subject was shaving. At 11:47 he said out loud 'those were the days', and at 11:49 he paused in his shaving and stared at the wall for almost fifteen minutes before recommencing the activity.'

'I see,' Scarlet said and stepped aside as she moved past, smiling at him and displaying a row of neat white teeth accentuated by a pair of pretty canines. Okay. Maybe. If Indigo should ever give him the chance he might make a move on her. She seemed like she might be mildly… boisterous.

The door slid shut, leaving him alone with the thought of her teeth clamping onto his tongue and his hands freeing her breasts from the black balconette, and he quickly buried that crazy idea away someplace where he hoped nobody would ever find it.

Scarlet lifted the tablet in his hand and logged himself in. '11.47,' he murmured, scrolling through the stored feed to the moment when Indigo said Tracy had spoken out loud. And there it was, the vidfile small on the screen and Tracy's distant, tinny voice saying ' _those were the days.'_

Scarlet looked up and stared through the two-way mirror that separated him from Virgil Tracy. _What the hell does that mean?_ he wondered, watching as Tracy lifted a hand to scratch at his cleanly-shaven chin.

He watched the sequence again – he could have looked at that footage from five other angles if he wanted to, because there wasn't one moment of Virgil Tracy's movements that hadn't been recorded these last two months. And when Scarlet wasn't parked in the observation room he was reviewing what had been saved to the Cloudbase servers, looking for something, anything, no matter how infinitesimal or indefinable, that would mark Virgil Tracy out as a Mysteron.

Solving the mystery of Virgil Tracy had so far been futile, but Scarlet couldn't bring himself to let it go. He lowered himself to a chair and tossed the tablet onto the seat next to him, followed in short order by his hat. Adam was right – he was obsessed. Tracy had a tangible aura, a frisson of electric ozone that put all of Scarlet's senses on edge, but every Mysteron test so far devised had come back negative – short of shooting him dead to see if he came back to life – and the results were so persistent that even Doctor Fawn was having a change of heart. Fawn's professional opinion now was that Tracy was suffering some kind of psychological break, that most probably he was human but whatever he'd seen on the other side had tipped him over some indefinable edge. And when pentothal hadn't been able to crack through Tracy's barriers, Fawn suggested they bring in a psychiatrist, because an expert might be able to worm a way through Tracy's formidable blockade. Scarlet could do nothing but laugh at that suggestion – as if a _shrink_ would be able to make a dent in the Mysteron mind.

Scarlet leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs out in front of him. Maybe he was overthinking it. Maybe they all were. Maybe it was as simple as something Adam had said one night over that shitty Pappy Van Winkle he occasionally smuggled on board. 'Maybe,' Adam had said as he licked his lips and knocked back the thin film of Pappy that was left in the bottom of his glass, 'Tracy is like _you.'_

'I don't think so,' Scarlet had replied, leaning his chair back on two legs.

'Quit it.' Blue used his foot to bring Scarlet's chair clattering back onto all fours. 'Are you drunk?' Blue asked. And then he grinned with great mirth.

'On this weak-as-water piss?' Scarlet helped himself to another round from the bottle. Truth was he hadn't been able to get drunk since he'd been retro-metabolised, and retro-metabolism never took a night off work. 'Not on your life,' he said, 'but I would like to know why you've brought me to your room and are plying me with contraband, since I've told you a thousand times already that you are too flat-chested for my liking.'

'Hey,' Blue said. 'A boob is a boob, whether it's a handful or a mouthful.'

'Lo,' Scarlet laughed. 'The oracle speaks truly.'

'Yeah,' Blue laughed back. 'And when the oracle speaks, the people must listen.'

'Well then.' Scarlet smiled indulgently at his friend. 'What words of wisdom do you have for this poor petitioner? Bearing in mind,' he added, 'that my father has already given me the talk.'

'Oh yeah,' Blue said as he drained another glass. 'I know you know what your penis is for.' He winked in the face of Scarlet's rising eyebrows. 'I know that, okay? I know.' He nodded sagely and then smiled lopsidedly. 'I know.' He sighed. 'I just wish,' he said, 'I just wish you would, you know, I wish you would _use_ it, or something. You need an outlet. Because this obsessing, this _obsessing_ is just not healthy.'

'What obsessing?' The smile was melting slowly from Scarlet's face.

'What the fuck?' Blue's eyes opened wide. 'Paul! What were we just talking about? Tracy! Virgil Tracy! The V-man! The man who disappeared in a puff of green smoke! _Poof!_ Tracy!'

'I see.' Scarlet looked down at the dregs in his glass, the ice having long-since melted into tiny little prisms. 'You think I'm obsessing?'

'Oh man.' Blue appraised Scarlet with as much seriousness as his lack of sobriety allowed. 'Yes, you are obsessing. You are obsessed. And I think,' he said as he swallowed back a belch, 'I think that it's because Virgil Tracy is like _you.'_

Scarlet carefully put his glass down on the bureau. 'Virgil Tracy is not like me.'

'Yes he is. He is. In a way.'

Scarlet stared unblinking at his friend. 'In what way?'

'Because he went to the other side, Paul. And he somehow, he _somehow,_ got out of it _alive.'_

* * *

It was surreal, the way the Tracys sat silent in their seats with their eyes locked on the image of Virgil Tracy that had been frozen on the screen, and their faces wrought with the same kind of stunned expression that mourners at a graveside sometimes wore. Colonel White wondered if the Apostles had worn the same expressions when Jesus had rolled aside the boulder of his tomb. Probably not. Jesus was destined to be reborn, after all, and Virgil Tracy's resurrection had been entirely unexpected.

Well.

White inhaled deep through his nose, the air laden with the scent of carpet cleaner and furniture polish and coffee cooling untouched on the oak of the table.

'When can we see him?'

White looked at Jeff Tracy and saw a father about to be devastated all over again, and hated himself for doing it. 'He's being held in containment on Cloudbase,' he said. 'We'll take you there as soon as you've been thoroughly briefed.'

'I thought we were finished here.'

'There is more you need to know.'

'I don't understand,' Jeff said. He looked piercingly at Colonel White. 'I don't understand,' he said again, and White felt the full force of Tracy's personality coming to bear. 'And it is pissing me off that I have to keep telling you that I don't understand. So far you have explained nothing. All you've done is tell us about Mars and Mysterons and expected us to believe it.'

'Do you believe it?' White interrupted. He glanced across at Scott, but the younger man stared single-mindedly at the screen, the muscles of his jaw twitching as he clenched and relaxed. Clenched and relaxed. White recognised all the signs – Tracy was thinking. Considering. Planning.

'I don't _know_ if I believe it,' Jeff Tracy told him. 'I don't even know if I _care_. But I can tell you one thing – ' his finger pointed forcefully towards the screen, ' – that man is my son. And that is something I _do_ care about.' It was clear he didn't need more convincing about Virgil Tracy's veracity – the image on the screen was proof enough.

White nodded thoughtfully. 'It does look like your son.'

'Colonel.' Tracy said, his temper running thin. 'You are still not making sense. That doesn't just 'look like' my son. That _is_ my son. I know it. And I want to see him. _Now.'_

'I'm afraid it's not going to be that simple – '

'Colonel,' Jeff interrupted, his tone changing from impatience and anger and into something colder and much less definable. 'It's time you came clean about what exactly is going on, or as soon as I leave this meeting I will instigate legal proceedings to have my son released from your custody. I can't imagine that public proceedings will sit well with Spectrum Command.'

'It won't sit well with anybody,' Scott Tracy said. He turned to look at Colonel White. 'Not once the world finds out about Spectrum's methods, and how casually they overstep the law and the legal rights of citizens.'

'Mr Tracy,' White said. 'As an ex-Airforce officer you are no doubt aware of Spectrum's remit. As a global security organisation we are not accountable to any one country's legal jurisdiction.'

'You think you have no accountability?' Scott asked.

'This is not a case of accountability – '

'That's exactly what it is,' Scott told him. 'And unless we start getting some answers, I will see to it that you are _made_ accountable.'

'Mr Tracy.' There was no raised voice, no increase in pitch, no urgency or anger in Colonel White's words, but none-the-less the tone shut Scott down. The young man sat back in his chair and glared, his jaw working as he ground his teeth together.

'The circumstances are difficult, I agree.' White gave them what he hoped was a placating smile. It didn't seem to help. 'If you could be patient for a little longer we will explain.'

'Alright,' Jeff said calmly, though it was obvious that the calm was as thin as oil on boiling water. 'Why don't you try.'

White's lips pursed together. He felt as though the tables were turning on him, that the Tracys had found their bearing now that they had something to work towards, and that nothing was out of their reach once they put their minds to it. They were a formidable pair, and White had no desire to turn them against him. 'Of course.' White turned to the scientists. 'Doctor Mackinnon,' he said. 'If you would please.'

'Yes, sir.' Mackinnon moved his gaze to the Tracys, his brown eyes dark in the pasty moon of his face. 'The vacuum of space,' he said as though commencing a lecture he'd been rehearsing the night before, 'is not entirely empty. It contains something researchers call zero point energy.'

'Very interesting,' Jeff Tracy said with barely controlled patience. 'What does this have to do with what happened to my son?'

'I'm getting to that.' Mackinnon took a breath. He wasn't used to a hostile audience and he started talking faster in his haste to get it over with. 'A zero point field is a, well, a field of zero point energy, and so far as we can tell these fields exist at every point in space and time. The universe,' he said, looking around the table to make sure everyone was paying attention, 'isn't exactly a vacuum. It's made up of fields of zero point energy, and it's been posited that if we could harness that energy we could not only power our entire planet indefinitely, but it would open up the entire universe.' Mackinnon was warming to his subject 'If we could tap into just the smallest fraction of it, we could travel to any place in the galaxy just by accessing the zero point energy we scoop up along the way.'

'This still doesn't explain what happened to my son,' Jeff said.

Dr Ainsworth cleared her throat. 'Masters was working on a zero point energy device when the incident occurred,' she said. 'He had calculated he could contain it in a neutrino field but – ' Her small eyes darted from the Tracys to White and back again. 'You know what happened after that.'

Jeff carefully appraised the two scientists. 'What you're saying is that Masters was attempting to create a zero point field inside the laboratory,' he summarised. 'What for?'

'Well.' Mackinnon cleared his throat. 'As I said, for the energy potential.'

'That's not entirely correct.' Colonel White looked slowly around the table. 'Spectrum provided the funding for the zero point device because it wasn't only about a search for new energy. We were hoping we would be able to use the device to access the Mysterons' continuum and defeat them.'

'Defeat them?' Scott said. 'You told us earlier that these beings don't exist in our time and space. How the hell were you planning to defeat them?'

'By meeting them on their level,' White told him. 'By using the zero point device to access their non-physical paradigm. By weaponising zero point energy and using it against them.'

'The best that we can understand,' Ainsworth continued, 'the Mysterons can occupy the third and fourth dimensions simultaneously. Thanks to the malfunction of the zero point device we may now have a doorway into the Mysterons' plane of existence. And thanks to Masters' experiment, we're one step closer to understanding – maybe even replicating – their abilities.'

'And what exactly are those abilities?' Jeff asked. He was still looking for answers, and they were painfully slow in coming.

'It seems,' Ainsworth said, 'that the Mysterons are able to use zero point energy to manipulate the fabric of the universe. They can travel instantaneously to any location in space, and, we suspect, to any location in time. They can create matter according to their whims. Their city on Mars was destroyed and then rebuilt as quickly as it was brought down.'

Mackinnon weighed in. 'When a particle, or a group of particles, an object, say, like a cat or a car, is absorbed by the zero point field, it is annihilated and then recreated out of the zero point state. The Mysterons are able to manipulate the matter absorbed into the field and bring any kind of object, animate or inanimate, into existence on our plane.'

'In simple terms?' Jeff asked. It was clear he was struggling, but since he had just seen footage of his son materialising out of thin air it was becoming obvious that he had no choice other than to accept what Ainsworth and Mackinnon were telling him.

'To put it plainly,' Mackinnon said, 'the Mysterons are able to absorb an object, or an individual, into the zero point field and then spit a replicated version of them back out again. We don't exactly understand how the process works, but we do know that it works better on organics if the organics are already dead. If the organics are still alive during the process then the results can be… unpredictable.'

'What do you mean 'unpredictable'?' Scott asked.

'I'm afraid that information is classified,' White replied before Mackinnon could put his foot in it.

'You've made a mistake,' Jeff told them as he looked around the table. 'Gordon's hands were inside the field,' he pointed out. 'He wasn't transformed. He was burned. Badly.'

Ainsworth leaned forward and looked directly at Jeff. 'Gordon wasn't burned at all. Your son's hands were immersed in the field while it was in a state of flux. We believe that his hands may have been partially disassembled by the field, and then reassembled again – the marks that remain on his skin may represent the demarcation between the two matter states.' She sat contemplatively back in her chair. 'The pain must have been beyond imagining.'

Jeff stared down at the grain of the table. 'He still feels that pain.'

'It's a unique situation,' Mackinnon said. 'I wish I could have had a chance to study him.'

Jeff looked up sharply. 'My son,' he said, 'is not a specimen to be put under a microscope.'

'Of course not,' Ainsworth said. 'He only meant – '

'I know what he meant.'

'But think how much we might have learned,' Mackinnon persisted.

'Doctor,' Colonel White said. 'Please.' He turned to Jeff. 'What we know for certain is that your son, Virgil, was absorbed entirely and wholly by the field. Since we know what happens inside a field, it means that the man we have in custody cannot, strictly speaking, be your son.' There was no way that White could put this gently. 'The man we have in custody must be a replica. A simulacrum. Matter that has somehow been reconfigured and made to look human.'

'Do you hear what you're saying?' Scott said. 'Do you have any idea how crazy this sounds? That's my _brother_ you're talking about!'

'Nevertheless,' White continued, 'Virgil Tracy was absorbed by a zero point field. For a time he was _part_ of that field. Part of the fabric of space and time.' He looked penetratingly around the table. 'The question we are now faced with is whether Virgil's matter has been recompiled in the same configuration or not – if he is something approximating a human, or if he has become something else.'

'What the hell do you mean, 'something else'?' Scott snapped.

'Something not human.' White swivelled his head to look at him. 'A Mysteron.'

'I can't believe this. How can he not be human?' Scott pointed at the screen and the frozen image of Virgil displayed on it. _'Look at him.'_

White's lips pursed together. The explanations didn't seem to be helping, and he would never have imagined these men to be so single-minded and stubborn. 'The Mysteron process is called 'retro-metabolism,' he explained, 'but it's far more complex than that. It is literally the creation of matter out of energy.'

'Or,' Mackinnon interjected, 'to take it to the next phase, since thoughts themselves are energy, then retro-metabolism is the holy grail of the quantum mystery – the creation of matter out of thought.'

'And since thought, or consciousness, exists at a quantum level,' Ainsworth added, 'and since the Mysterons appear to be composed of consciousness only, then that means the Mysterons are everywhere and nowhere at once. And if they can make themselves corporeal according to their will, and if they are capable of assuming the energetic skins of whoever they may have absorbed into the field – ' She looked slowly around the boardroom, scrutinising each face individually. 'That means that any one of us could be one of them, _and nobody would know it.'_

'The Mysterons make soldiers out of our own people,' White said bitterly. 'They take good men and women and they change them on the subatomic level into drones working for their own, evil cause. They turn friend against friend and brother against brother, and they do not care how much human blood is shed in that process.'

He looked penetratingly at Jeff Tracy. At Scott Tracy. Because if they didn't see the danger now, and if they didn't agree to help him… White suddenly felt old. Worn down and wearied by all the years of fighting. 'You see our dilemma,' he said. 'And you see why we have called this clandestine war, perhaps humanity's greatest war, a war of nerves.'

White sat back in his chair and contemplated his guests. The genetic line was clear – the same strength of character, the same clear eyes, and the same determined cast of the jaw. White wondered what chain of events had influenced the Tracys so profoundly – what had made them love humanity so much that they dedicated their minds and their bodies and their fortune to keeping the human race safe, to keeping the indefinable spark of man burning in a universe that was chipping away at it one atom at a time.

'What do you want us to do,' Jeff said, and White felt a glimmer of hope kindle at his words.

'We want you to talk to him,' White said. 'If he can tell you where he's been, and if he can satisfy you that he is your son and that he still possesses some humanity, and if it can be ascertained for absolute certain that he is not under Mysteron control, then he may be our best hope in this war of nerves.'

Jeff inhaled. A deep and thoughtful breath, because Colonel White was asking him for more than he might be able to provide. 'And if we can't?'

White exhaled wearily, feeling like a bastard because he'd dangled hope in their faces and now he was taking it away. 'Then we will have no alternative but to assume that Virgil Tracy is a Mysteron agent, and we will eliminate him.'


	7. six

**zero point**

 _six_

* * *

Scott Tracy was on the move, the bright signal of his beacon pulsing a steady trail as the transmitter bypassed Heathrow and moved west out of London.

John's attention moved from one point on the tracking screen to the next as he projected Scott's route to its assumed destination – the transmitter was headed towards Northolt Field, which made no sense at all unless Scott was being transferred to a Spectrum aircraft. _Although,_ John thought as he shifted in his chair and the lights of his board reflected multi-coloured in his eyes, _nothing had made any sense since the whole fucking Spectrum debacle had begun._

The beacon on the screen pulsed and made a turn hard-left, and John found himself staring at it with his thumbnail pressed against his bottom lip. Maybe Scott had purged the transmitter already – in which case Thunderbird 5's systems were monitoring the edible transmitter as it flushed its way through London's sewage system. With a series of taps across his screen John piggybacked 5's sensors to the nearest telco array, triangulated the signal to make sure the beacon was on top of the street and not under it, and satisfied himself that the transmitter was still lodged inside Scott and that both were now definitely headed towards Northolt Field. It was small consolation to know that Scott's bowels were as disciplined as they had ever been, but the target destination made John lean back in his seat with his jaw tight and his tongue pressed hard against the back of his teeth. There was a singular possibility that Northolt raised with all flags flying – that his father and his brother had been taken into custody. That Spectrum had finally decided to make good on their threat to shut International Rescue down.

John's stomach lurched. It was always the same – a loss of equilibrium as he felt all the miles of endless space stretching out beneath his feet. He'd had that feeling more and more since that day, triggered by the memory of his Virgil screaming and Scott's voice, frantic, over the comms. And after the screaming had come the silence, when John had sat quiet for hours listening to the cold empty static where Virgil had once been, and staring at the uncaring planet as it moved blue through an uncaring universe.

He'd expected the world to stop turning that day – because how could it go on, spinning blithely with its mass of stupid people fighting over nothing, arguing over lines drawn in sand and dents in their cars and what sort of wine they should serve with their undercooked meat. John had hated the world in that moment. It was all so meaningless and pointless and pathetic, with the Earth moving relentless around the Sun, and the Moon right there grinning in his face, and the cold, indifferent stars stretching out into infinity.

* * *

Spectrum's passenger jet was an unexpectedly comfortable affair, dedicated, apparently, to ferrying only the world's most very important personages – as Magenta had confirmed when he'd told Jeff and Scott to take their seats where the World President usually sat.

Magenta had waited patiently while they organised themselves, watched solicitously as they buckled themselves in, and then settled himself down with a full-body sigh in the seat across the aisle. He was still there now, with his legs stretched annoyingly out onto the deep blue carpet and his pink boots crossed lazily at the ankles. Those boots hadn't budged as the SPJ barrelled down the rain-slicked runway and cut its way up through the turbulent layer of cloud that still shrouded London, not even twitching when a microburst dropped them through enough feet of altitude that Scott felt his stomach rise with the loss of gravity, and a loud rattle of glass sounded noisily from a drinks locker located back of the seats. And when equilibrium was regained and the SPJ burst through the cloudbank and accelerated supersonic into blue air and sunshine, those long pink boots uncrossed and recrossed with confident ease, as if the owner of said boots sat through that kind of shit every day.

'Apologies,' Colonel White said as he emerged from the cockpit. He'd disappeared into it when they'd boarded, along with Captain Ochre and another officer in grey, who'd spared Scott a quick ' _welcome aboard'_ before turning a gaze on Jeff that Scott recognised all too well as awe-struck admiration at meeting Jeff Tracy. _The_ Jeff Tracy. Relic survivor of man's first forays to the moon and back – a 'living fossil,' as a 13 year-old Gordon had once quipped with juvenile hilarity before failing to dart fast enough to avoid the back-flip of his father's hand.

Colonel White moved into the aisle and sent Magenta's boots leaping out of it with a flicker of his cool grey eyes. 'Our ETA is twenty minutes,' he informed them, his legs braced sailor-like as the jet juddered into the jet stream. 'We have a fully-stocked bar, if you'd like to take advantage of it.'

'No thanks,' Scott replied. He was full of bad coffee and didn't have the stomach for any more poison.

Jeff had been focused on the sky outside the window and Scott doubted he'd even heard the Colonel's offer, though he shouldn't really have been surprised when his father roused from his contemplation of the bright air and sunshine – being father to five boys had finessed Jeff's ability to focus on more than one conversation at a time. 'Whiskey,' Jeff said, not meeting anybody's eyes.

'Of course,' the Colonel said.

Magenta slid smoothly from his seat and made his way aft to the galley, and White settled himself into the officer's vacated chair. 'You understand that Cloudbase is off-limits to civilians,' he said without preamble. 'We won't ask you to sign the Official Secrets Act, but we do ask that you respect the secrecy under which Spectrum operates. Whatever you see or hear on the base, including the reason why you are there, will need to remain confidential.'

'Or what?' Scott's tongue rebelled against the taste of shitty coffee that had been burned indelibly into his taste-buds. 'You'll keep us in custody until we agree not to talk?' There was a sound of bottles clanking from aft, and what sounded like ice being loaded into a tumbler. 'Been there,' he reminded the Colonel. 'Done that.'

White sighed through his nose. 'Spectrum hasn't exactly been forthcoming with information,' he acquiesced, his voice still annoyingly proper with its regimented vowels – even the man's words had somehow managed to arrange themselves in formation. 'And I agree that HQ did not handle your involvement in the Faulkner incident appropriately. I'm sorry for what happened to your family. And to your organisation.' The Colonel had addressed these last comments to Jeff, but Jeff didn't turn to look at him, staring instead at the rainbow swirl of the Spectrum logo that was emblazoned on the forward bulkhead.

'There will be another briefing session when we arrive,' the Colonel continued when neither Tracy spoke. 'You'll be able to talk to the base doctor, and the officers in charge of this case.'

Scott's mouth twitched with irritation. He hadn't slept for twenty-four hours and he felt like it. 'Another hurdle in our way?' he challenged, leaning back as Magenta passed a half-full tumbler across to his father. 'Or another chance for you to back out?' Maybe he should have taken a drink after all – he was wired-up tight and he could smell the whiskey in his father's glass, strong and sweet and seductive. 'Excuse me, sir,' he addressed the Colonel with forced politeness, 'but it's time you stopped fucking us around.'

Surprise passed across the Colonel's face, fast and fleeting and gone as swiftly as it had appeared. 'I know how this must seem. All this talk of zero point energy and Mysterons no doubt sounds to you like science fiction.' An empathetic smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. 'Lord knows, but in the cold light of day even I sometimes have my doubts.'

'So far,' Scott said, ignoring the Colonel's attempt at apologetic familiarity, 'all you've done is beat around the bush.' He stared into the Colonel's cool grey eyes. 'I want to see my brother. After that, we can talk. _'_

'There are still reasons to doubt that he is your brother,' Magenta interrupted out of nowhere.

Scott glanced up at the officer, but Magenta's eyes were unreadable in his clean-shaven face.

The Colonel cleared his throat, and Magenta turned on his heels and returned to the galley. 'The Captain is correct.' White returned his attention to the Tracys. 'It might be better if you don't get your hopes up.'

'Excuse me?'Scott said. From the seat beside him drifted the bell-like tinkle of ice as his father drained the whisky from his glass. 'If you didn't want us to have hope, then you should never have made that damn phone call.'

White's head nodded, his lips tight and one hand drifting down to brush the trousers of his uniform where the fabric stretched across his thigh. 'I've read your Air Force file, Mr Tracy. Veteran of the second Siberian uprising, a tour of duty in Bereznia, three commendations for valour and a decorated hero. And now, as International Rescue's field commander, you are the first responder, aren't you. The first on scene. The first man at the locus of danger.'

'Very nice,' Scott said, his eyes never moving from the Colonel's face as the older man clinically listed the chapters of his life. 'What's your point?'

'My point,' the Colonel said as he accepted a glass from Magenta, 'is that you are a man of action. You aren't a man who likes to sit around and wait for the action to come to you. Alright. We will dispense with the pre-brief.' White raised the glass to his lips and swallowed an emotionless mouthful. 'You want this over with. On a more visceral level, you need closure.'

'You're right.' Scott watched as the Colonel sipped from his glass. 'I want this over with. And I'll do whatever it takes to end it.'

* * *

Captain Blue placed his cap on his head and inspected himself in the mirror, taking a moment to admire how fine he looked in his uniform and how well the blue of his tunic matched the blue of his eyes. It wasn't arrogance or vanity, he told himself as he slicked an untidy strand of blond hair carefully back under his cap, it was just an unfortunate reality. Being handsome and rich and coming from a background of privilege was equal parts blessing and curse, and not for the first time Adam Svenson found himself wondering how Virgil Tracy had handled it, and that maybe one day they could compare notes. On his cooperative days Tracy seemed like he might be a personable and well-adjusted guy once you got to know him. And once you got past the possibility that he might be a card-carrying Mysteron.

Hair satisfactorily smoothed back into place, Captain Blue shoved his razor back in the drawer and rinsed the sink clean, glancing up when the door chime pinged. Scarlet was meant to be meeting him at the lockdown, not here, but it was just like Paul to show up unannounced to make sure he was getting a move-on. Blue wiped his hands on a towel and strode across to the door – a pitiful few strides with legs as long as his, and the officers' quarters on Cloudbase weren't exactly huge. Just enough room for a bed, a console and a couple of chairs, and a small bathroom at least so they didn't have to rotate through a communal head. He palmed the door open with his hand, stepping quickly out of the way when a floral-scented whirlwind slipped past him into the room.

'Symphony,' he hissed, poking his head into the corridor to check if she'd been seen coming in. The passageway was clear, and he ducked back inside and locked the door behind him. 'What's the matter?' he asked, concerned because she only ever did things like this in the middle of the night when she was sure she wouldn't get caught.

'Nothing,' Symphony said, advancing towards him so that he no choice other than to stand there and let her, or to take a step back until he was butted up against the door. Blue opted to take a step back and found himself butted up against the door.

'I'm on a break,' she told him, amused at his predicament, 'and I was thinking that maybe you might be needing a break too...' She trailed off because the quirk of his lips indicated he knew exactly what sort of a 'break' she meant, but just in case it still wasn't clear she reached for his belt, her hands moving with practiced ease as she worked the buckle free.

'Sorry,' he said, taking hold of her hands and moving them as far away from his belt buckle as he could. 'No can do. I'm meeting Scarlet in twenty minutes and I've still got some reports to – '

'Perfect,' she grinned, her hands slipping out of his and moving back to unfasten his belt.

Captain Blue's eyes turned heavenward as if searching for strength. 'I can't believe I'm actually going to say this, but Symphony, no, right now I just don't have the time.'

'You can make the time.'

'No, I can't, I really really can't,' he said, realising as he said it that he'd already lost the battle. In the three seconds he'd spent telling her he that he really really couldn't, she had his belt free and was working on the zipper of his fly, her hand sliding smoothly beneath his briefs and making him suck in a lungful of air when her cool fingers met his warm skin. 'Karen,' he groaned helplessly as her fingers found their mark.

'Shut up and get undressed,' she whispered, enjoying the feel of him beneath her hand.

'You know how long it takes to put this uniform on?' he asked, breathing hard and yet somehow keeping it together despite all the activity that was taking place in his underwear.

'I do,' Symphony said, 'because every time you take it off you bitch about putting it back on.' She stood on her toes to press her lips against his, loving the baby-soft smoothness of his fresh-shaven cheeks and the hint of alpine fir in his aftershave. 'Just think,' she said, smiling against his mouth and feeling him smile back in return, 'about how much fun we'll have once you get it all off.'

'Alright,' he conceded, one hand slipping along the contours of her Angel flightsuit until he grasped one perfectly-shaped buttock in the palm of his hand. There was no point protesting anymore – all he could do was to flip it around and get the upper hand. 'But on one condition.'

'And what's that?'

'You're taking it off all by yourself, and I'm not helping you.' He raised his hands in the air to prove he was serious. 'And you've only got twenty minutes.'

'No fair.' Symphony's hand slipped free of his briefs and she worked hastily at the fastenings of his tunic. 'Why do I always have to do all the work?'

'Honey,' he said, waving a hand towards himself like a game-show hostess displaying a much-coveted prize. 'You want this, then you gotta work for it. Now,' he grinned down at her, 'be careful when you take off the hat. I just fixed my hair.'

* * *

Cloudbase was a magnificent sight as the SPJ made her approach, the airborne carrier glinting like a rare jewel in the eternal sunshine that forty thousand feet of altitude could bring.

Scott had seen the carrier before, of course, but he'd made sure to always keep Thunderbird 1 at the limits of the airborne strike team that his Air Force buddies assured him were aboard. _'Angels,'_ they had called them as the beer had flowed and the pretzels somehow made their way onto the well-worn boards of the bar-room floor. Exotic and ethereal beauties with unmatched tactical ability and supernatural piloting skills, the words whispered with such drunken awe that Scott was hard-pressed not to smirk as he leaned back in his chair and signalled the barkeep for another round. Angels or no, nothing on the planet could match Thunderbird 1 for speed. And no angel – or devil, for that matter – could _ever_ match Scott Tracy for piloting skill.

The view outside the window changed, Cloudbase drifting slowly out of view as the SPJ moved onto a more direct bearing. Scott's gaze shifted, his father's profile coming into sharp focus with the too-bright sky behind him.

'Dad,' Scott said. 'You okay?'

Jeff inhaled, a long-drawn breath as though his lungs hadn't tasted air in a thousand years and his son's voice had jolted them back to reluctant life.

'Honestly?' Jeff said, turning to look at Scott. 'I don't know.' Pain flashed across his face and made his mouth twitch, and he kept his voice low so the officer seated across the aisle couldn't hear. 'I don't know what to think, son. I don't know what to feel.' He stared at Scott, direct and intense and searching. 'How am I supposed to _feel?'_

'I wish I knew,' Scott replied. He could smell the whiskey, sweet and strong, on his father's breath.

'I didn't want to hope for it,' Jeff told him, the high-altitude cloud throwing too much glare in through the window and casting a halo through the grey of his hair. 'But now it's _all_ I can hope for.'

* * *

'You're late.'

'Am not.' Captain Blue looked at his watch. 'Okay. Three minutes,' he conceded.

'Two minutes forty seven,' Scarlet informed him with deliberately irritating accuracy. 'The SPJ touched down five minutes ago. Fortunately for you the Tracys will still be in processing.'

'Which gives us at least another ten minutes.' Captain Blue closed the door behind him and moved to where Scarlet was sitting in the centre of the small observation room with his chair turned towards the two-way mirror. Scarlet had his legs stretched out and his ankles crossed, and his hat was resting upturned on the chair next to him. He'd been there a while judging from the attitude, and from the empty coffee cup that he nursed in one hand. Blue lowered himself into the nearest empty chair and looked at the prisoner through the two-way mirror. 'What's he doing?'

'Playing the piano.'

Blue stared through the glass. Tracy had put on his change of clothes, and shaved, and his hair was combed neatly away from his face – it had grown too unruly to stay there, but at least the guy had tried. And true to Scarlet's words the man's hands were splayed across his thighs, his fingers tapping out a leisurely tune across an imaginary keyboard.

'His file says he was a pianist.' Scarlet leaned forward to put the empty cup beneath his seat. 'A good one too, if the information is accurate.' He sat back in his chair and looked at Captain Blue as if a thought had just occurred. 'You ever play any instruments?'

'No,' Blue replied. 'Yes,' he corrected, leaning back in his chair and stretching his legs out in a lazy imitation of Scarlet. 'Sort of. There was a moment in my freshman year, when I was living on campus, and I had this crazy idea that playing the guitar would attract me some ladies. I thought playing the guitar would make me irresistible. Well,' he added as an afterthought, 'more irresistible than I already am.' He chuckled at his post-pubescent naiveté. 'I did the whole tie-dye thing – even grew my hair out and got myself a half-assed goatee going on. My father lost his shit when he got a load of me – stopped my allowance until I started behaving like a respectable Svenson.'

'And what happened?' Scarlet asked.

'I learned to shave and Pop's money instantly reappeared in the bank,' Blue replied.

'I meant to the _guitar.'_

Blue grinned. 'Discovered I didn't need it. Turns out I have other instruments I can use to attract the ladies.'

Scarlet rolled his eyes. 'You did not just say that.'

'Yes I did,' Blue replied. 'I did just say that.'

'There is something very wrong with you.'

Blue grinned and whispered cheekily, 'just don't tell anybody.'

Scarlet matched the grin. 'Tell me, has Mr Bear been dipping into the honey pot?'

Blue narrowed his eyes at Scarlet's use of his codename. 'What the hell does that mean?'

'You have lipstick in your ear.'

Captain Blue swiped at his ear.

'No,' Scarlet told him. 'Not _on_ your ear. _In_ your ear.' He made a circular movement with one finger in the air. 'Inside that bit, you know, that ridge bit, that thing there.'

'Asshole,' Blue said with his finger in his ear.

Scarlet's grin settled into a smirk. 'Exactly how did you get lipstick in your ear?'

Blue ignored the question – and the irritating smirk on Scarlet's face. 'Is it gone?'

'Yes,' Scarlet sighed with the faintest trace of disappointment. He looked at his watch, got to his feet and worked at straightening his uniform. 'Come on,' he said, handing Captain Blue a pair of restraints. 'Let's get this family reunion started.'

* * *

It was not much worse than going through an airport security point, or getting on board an aircraft carrier, or getting into the White House, for that matter – the pat-down was routine, but the full-body scan was probably strong enough to show up what Scott had eaten for breakfast three weeks ago.

There was a moment when Scott had thought the scanner paused a fraction too long on its second pass, and he had licked his lips and cast his eyes towards the technician at the board. The young man stared intently at the display of Scott's inner workings on his screen, his face tight in concentration and his features shadowed blue from the LCD of the panel. It hadn't taken this long when his father had gone through and Scott had held his breath, willing his heart to slow in his chest as he watched the technician chewing on his lip, and maybe sweat had pricked out under Scott's arms as he waited the interminable seconds for the scanner to shut itself down with a loud and unexpected whump.

'All clear,' the tech said from his position at the board, coming out from behind the console and handing Scott his wallet and his watch. The tech was shorter than he'd looked sitting down, and he smiled up at Scott with the reassuring kind of smile that a dental receptionist uses when they ask the patient to take a seat just before the dentist rips their teeth out. 'Welcome aboard.'

* * *

The door, when it opened, slid away with a soft pneumatic whoosh that always caught him off-guard.

Virgil's fingers flattened against the white of his Spectrum-issue pants as a draft of cool air rushed in from the hall, the atmosphere suddenly swimming with the mismatched scents of pine disinfectant and day-old coffee. Virgil let the odours move around him, so pungent to his starving senses he could practically see them colliding in the air.

'Good afternoon, Mr Tracy.' Captain Blue dangled a pair of cuffs in front of Virgil's eyes. 'Hands out, palms up.'

Virgil's head tilted back, his hands still pressed flat against his thighs. He'd been deep inside Liszt's Transcendental number 12 and he was resenting the interruption. 'Really?' he said, looking at the cuffs. 'I thought we'd moved past this.'

Captain Scarlet turned from his inspection of the cell. 'You heard the man. Hands out, palms up.'

Virgil's lips quirked at the captain's wary posturing, the fleeting smile making Scarlet narrow his eyes and scrutinise his prisoner carefully.

'What's so funny,' Scarlet asked, his body tight and his fingers lingering over the butt of his gun.

Virgil rose to his feet, carefully and deliberately until he stood at full height and could stare the captain straight in the eye. 'Nothing,' he said to Scarlet, holding out his hands so that Captain Blue could slip the restraints around them. 'There's nothing funny about this at all.'

* * *

The interrogation room was small. Claustrophobic. Painted an almost-grey kind of white that blended seamlessly with the bright-lit ceiling and molded imperceptibly into the vinyl-tiled floor. The only blemish Scott could see on that sterile white finish were the scuff marks that streaked low along the walls, where the feet of past prisoners must have screeched along them in their panicked attempts to avoid the worse.

'If you would take these seats,' Colonel White said, motioning Jeff and Scott toward two chairs placed on one side of a white plastic table. He gestured towards the glass inset in the far wall, the mirrored surface bouncing their reflections back in the hard light from the ceiling. 'We'll be watching from the observation room, of course, and two security officers will be posted outside the door. They'll respond instantly if there are any difficulties. But,' he added, moving around to the opposite side of the table where a single chair had been placed, 'in the interests of avoiding any potential danger to yourselves or to my staff, we would ask you not to attempt to engage physically with the prisoner.'

Scott's mouth opened in protest. 'You can't be – '

'Please,' the Colonel said. 'We'll all be safer if you would follow the protocol.' He pulled the single chair out from the table but didn't sit in it. 'These are simply precautions, Mr Tracy. Believe it or not, we're all hoping for the same outcome.'

'Sure,' Scott said, feeling suddenly claustrophobic. He remembered sitting in the same kind of room in one of Spectrum's landside facilities, in the long hard days that followed the incident at Faulkner's. They'd kept him there for hours, with the dust of the tunnel still in his hair, and dirt still streaked across his uniform, and a layer of steel-wool stubble peppered across his chin, and he surely must have stunk of sweat and fear and the terror of that moment when he'd realised Virgil was gone. Scott glanced up at the camera set into the ceiling then looked back at his reflection in the mirror, his eyes narrowing as he tried to see past it to whoever waited beyond.

'Let's proceed,' Colonel White said, straightening in his uniform and glancing one last time at the empty chair.

Scott roused from of his contemplation of the space behind the mirror and turned to watch the Colonel leave, breathing deep because he had to be ready for what was coming next. It was like steeling your nerves for battle, knowing that you'd be lucky if you got out of it alive.

The door slid shut behind the Colonel's retreating back, leaving them alone in the silence with just the sound of their breathing and the sensation of sweat breaking out on the palms of their hands. Scott turned to Jeff and met his father's troubled grey eyes. 'Nervous?' he asked, his voice pitched low because there were ears everywhere, and there were pale faces watching beyond the polished surface of the mirrored glass.

'Hell, yes.' Jeff turned to stare at the single, vacant chair opposite. 'I can't stop thinking _what if… '_

'I know.' Scott's gaze landed on the empty chair. _What if…_ The statement encompassed every possibility in the universe. 'Dad, I – '

Footsteps sounded outside the door and Scott straightened in his chair. He felt hot suddenly, his palms moist and his mouth dry and there was noise rushing loud inside his head. 'Dad,' he said, but the sound didn't escape his lips as the door slid back open with a pneumatic rush.

'Gentlemen.' Captain Scarlet strode into the room and gave them a perfunctory smile. They had met before, of course, in the dark hollow space where Faulkner Labs had been.

Scott felt his mouth tighten. 'Captain,' he returned, because if he couldn't be polite he could at least be civil. Scott made as if to stand, but the Captain waved him back into the chair.

Scarlet moved to the opposite side of the table. 'I assume the Colonel has briefed you on the protocols.' He looked down at them, his eyes as cool and blue as Scott had remembered, and his voice still so smug and annoying that Scott wanted to punch it right down the back of Scarlet's throat.

'The prisoner will sit here.' Scarlet pulled the empty chair out further than the Colonel had. 'And you will refrain from making physical contact.' He turned towards the door before either Jeff or Scott could reply. 'I hope you're prepared,' he said as a white-clad figure stepped into the doorway. 'I know from experience that this can be quite a shock.'

 _So this is what shock feels like,_ Scott thought as the blood drained abruptly from his limbs and pulsed clamouring into his brain. He knew it was in his brain because he could hear it there, rushing and screaming and drowning out everything but the light, tunnelling his vision down to one single, narrow point so he could see nothing else but the man framed in the doorway, and he didn't dare to look away in case it was one of those midnight visions, the shadows you can see in the corner of your eye, only when you turn to look at them they were never really there. Scott swallowed, tried to swallow, but his throat was dry, his lips parting with uncertainty and his hands balling into fists because he desperately wanted to reach across to touch his father, to shake him and say to him _Are you seeing what I'm seeing?_

And maybe for a moment Virgil had the same thought, the same rushing tunnel vision, because he faltered on the threshold for just a moment, his lips parting infinitesimally in maybe surprise or recognition, and then he was over the lip of the door and being steered into the room by Captain Blue, the officer's hand tight on Virgil's elbow as he guided him down into the chair.

There were no more words as the officers left the room, no more warnings and instructions, just Scarlet pausing on the threshold before he finally closed the door. And then the three of them were alone, listening to the sound of footsteps receding down the hall and looking at each other across the sterile white expanse of table, and Scott wondered if it would be alright to grab hold of his father now.

Virgil shifted in his chair and carefully raised his cuffed hands to rest them on the table. He was clean-shaven, his hair combed, the remorseless white of the table reflecting up into a face that was pale and tired and drawn. The only colour to be seen were the bruises around his eyes, as though he hadn't slept for days. Or weeks. Or maybe even months.

Those bruised eyes stared back at Scott, moved to his father, moved back to Scott, and back, and forth, and back again, the expression in them unreadable, unfathomable, as though Virgil was trying in his own quiet way to assimilate this unexpected new reality. The Colonel's words about Mysterons and the zero point field filled Scott's mind, tumbling one over the other as he stared into Virgil's unblinking eyes.

This wasn't how Scott had imagined it – not even in those bitter moments of weakness when he'd cursed his brother for dying and leaving them with nothing but a gaping and all-consuming void in their lives. They missed the sound of him at the piano. They missed the creak and clatter of his easel when he propped it on the balcony. Even the smell of him had slowly vanished from their world – the oil paint and turpentine, the engine grease and pomade. It was inevitable, Scott guessed, that the wound would slowly draw itself shut. _Time heals all wounds_ his grandmother had said, but this was a wound that was still bleeding, only Scott hadn't realised it until now.

'Son,' Jeff said, the single word breaking the silence, his father's voice filled with all the hope and fear that two years of grief could bestow.

'Dad,' Virgil said, his voice as rich and familiar as it ever was. 'Scott.'

Scott looked at his brother and wanted to bury his face in his hands, because with those two small words he knew it was true, that this was Virgil, alive, and whole, and Scott was afraid that after all this time of holding himself together, he might finally crumble apart.

Virgil took a breath and leaned toward them across the plastic of the table. 'What _took_ you so long?'


	8. seven

**zero point**

 _seven_

* * *

It was pleasant here, in Tin-Tin's bed, with the sheets still damp beneath his back and the ceiling fan spinning slow and lazy circles in the air above his head.

Cameron closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of sweat drying on his skin and basking in the afterglow of a session of hot, naked wrestling with the object of Alan Tracy's desires. He didn't feel any guilt at the thought of snatching Tin-Tin out from under the cherub's little nose, but he did wonder if he should have let it get this far.

 _Christ._ He hated fucking up. Fraternisation was a punishable offence back where he came from – he could still hear the words ringing in his ears, as loud and clear as the day he'd first ever had them shouted at him: _Fraternisation compromises the chain of command! Feelings confuse decision making! Relationships impact your ability to complete your mission!_ Cameron hated having to admit it, but Alan had been right to keep Miss Kyrano at arm's length – it was just a shame that Alan's noble sacrifice had been no match for Tin-Tin's exasperated libido.

Cameron opened his eyes and turned his gaze towards the bathroom door. The object of his attention was still in there – tinkling, or whatever it was that women did in the bathroom after sweaty sex. Arranging her hair, probably, even though he preferred it the way it looked after his fingers had mussed it up, and the thought of his hands in her hair and the way her lips felt against his body sent a wave of blood rushing so fast to his groin that he had to pull the sheets up to cover the rising swell of his erection. The damn thing was a liability – and look at the trouble it had got him into _now._

* * *

Sometimes words were felt more than heard.

' _What took you so long,'_ Virgil said.

It was the sort of question a child might ask when his mother was late for the afternoon pickup. Five small words, full of pain and abandonment and sharp enough to break a heart.

'We didn't know you were here,' Scott said. 'We didn't even know you were – ' Scott closed his mouth. _Alive,_ he had been going to say. We didn't know you were _alive._

'Virgil.' Jeff sat unnaturally still in his seat. 'Son.' He waited until Virgil's gaze turned to meet his own. 'How are you?'

A troubled crease made itself visible between Virgil's brows. 'I'm okay, I guess.' He indicated the cuffs clamped around his wrists. 'What's going on, Dad? Have I done something wrong?'

'No.' Jeff shook his head with emphatic certainty. 'You haven't.'

The crease deepened. 'Then why am I here?'

Scott cleared his throat and Virgil turned to look at him. 'We don't know what to tell you, Virg. You've been gone for two years and they think – '

'What?' Virgil stared, his gaze fixed and disconcerting. _'Two years?_ ' Darkness flashed momentarily in his eyes, his face ghost-like in the glare from the overhead lights. He looked different suddenly, not quite himself, and his fingers twitched where they rested on the table. He laughed, a short, sharp burst of mirth that dissipated on the sterile air. 'Huh. I didn't expect that.'

Jeff felt a tremor run through him, involuntary, that detached sensation of somebody walking over your grave. 'I think,' Jeff said, hating that Spectrum had made him wary of his boy, 'that we need to go back to the beginning.'

* * *

Cameron listened as the toilet flushed and the faucet turned on and off, and there was silence for a moment as Tin-Tin arranged whatever it was that needed arranging, and then the door swung wide and silhouetted her sylph-like in the frame before she switched the light off.

'Damn,' Cameron murmured, genuinely disappointed. 'You put clothes on.' Not that she was wearing much – a tiny white kimono that skimmed the top of her thighs and was barely enough to cover her modesty. Not even enough, he noticed, as she softly moved towards him.

'I thought I would get us something to eat,' she said, turning on the bedside lamp because the sun had set hours ago and the moon was somewhere on the other side of the Earth, and maybe she wanted to see the hard contours of his chest and his stomach, and the sand-brown trail of hair that led down beneath the bunched-up silk of the sheet.

'Not,' he said, his eyes widening in surprise, 'dressed like _that,_ I hope!"

She pouted prettily by the side of the bed, her tanned thighs long and lean and perfectly positioned in his field of view. 'Why ever not?'

'Be _cause!'_ he said in imitation of an indignant Grandma Tracy and fighting against his impulse to reach out and grab ahold of her and wrestle her back onto the bed. 'Land sakes, girl, there are grown _men_ out there!'

'Nobody will be around,' she said, frowning. 'I've done it a thousand times before.'

'You _have?_ What if Alan saw you? Or _Brains,_ ' he said, outraged, and finally giving in to his impulse. He tugged at the hem of her kimono and pulled her down towards him. 'I've seen the way he looks at you.'

'That's not funny,' she said, unresisting as he pulled her down beside him on the bed. 'Brains is a friend and a colleague – '

'He's a hot-blooded male,' Cameron interrupted, 'who's been saving his testosterone for just the right woman. I've seen it a million times before. The man's a volcano waiting to erupt, so in order to save the villagers _I'll_ be the one who goes to the kitchen for vittles tonight, thank you very much.'

'You shouldn't joke like that,' she said, still frowning as she rested her head against his shoulder and made herself comfortable in the crook of his arm. 'Do you really think Brains could…' She never finished the question, the words trailing off as Cameron pulled her closer.

'I don't think,' he replied. 'I _know.'_ He slid his free hand across the smooth, cool silk of her kimono. 'Because this…' he said as his fingers came to rest against the curve of her hip, '…is definitely worth erupting for.'

It was maybe the wrong thing to say or maybe the wrong thing to do, because she was suddenly distant and cool beneath his fingers and Cameron knew well enough by now when to leave things alone. He took his hand from her hip and used it to prop his head up on the pillow, happy enough just to feel the warmth of her body where she nestled against him. _Forget fraternisation,_ he told himself ruefully. _He was beginning to have honest-to-god feelings…_

'I used to always play the part,' she blurted out, defensive suddenly. 'I always tried to be a lady, and dress properly, and be the sort of person everybody thought I should be.'

He blinked, because where was this coming from? 'Okaaaayyyy,' he ventured. 'Everybody like who?'

'My father, I suppose. Mr Tracy. Alan and his brothers. Every man I ever dated.' She sighed, whether from disappointment or frustration he couldn't properly tell. 'They all seem to have the idea that I'm made out of porcelain, and they all expect me to be a perfect lady as if butter wouldn't melt in my mouth.'

Cameron smiled. He knew from experience that butter definitely melted in her mouth. 'So what changed?' he asked, wondering if he was about to get the blame for her total lapse in morals.

She shrugged against him. 'My priorities, I guess. I see the world differently now. It's that saying about living every moment like it counts – I try to be in every moment fully now, because everything changed the day Virgil didn't come home.'

He shifted his arm beneath his head. 'You make it sound like he got lost on the way home from work.'

'That's how it felt,' she said, and then she added, 'It's hard when you don't… when you've got nothing left. I don't know… maybe I _am_ waiting for him to come home.'

She lay quietly in the lamplight, remembering, and then she said, 'there wasn't a body, you know. Nothing we could bury. No proof that Virgil was dead. No proof even that he had ever been alive. All you have left are your memories, and then your memory starts to play tricks on you.' She sighed and moved and her hair tickled him where it touched his skin. 'It was like he was sitting out on the terrace one morning, wearing his robe and trying to wake up with his morning cigarette, just the same as every other morning, and by the afternoon he was completely and utterly gone.'

She didn't cry. Her voice didn't even tremble, and Cameron supposed she was cried out after all this time. 'But you have his paintings,' he reminded, waving a hand towards the wall and trying to be helpful. 'That's proof.'

She tilted her head so she could see the canvas that hung over the dresser, pink paint splashed across a landscape in broad and confident strokes. It was proof, alright. It was gilt-framed graffiti, screaming "I was here. I was _here!"_

'I remember when he painted that,' she said. 'We hadn't been on the island long, just a few months, and we had the first cyclone of the season. The first _proper_ cyclone. It was insane, with lightning and thunder and the wind breaking the trees to pieces, and waves that were taller than the cliffs on the point. I thought our little island would be washed away, and I remember the rain coming in sideways and beating against the villa so hard I was sure the windows were going to break. And maybe after two days of that, after two days of us thinking that it was the end of the world and that we were all going to die out here – don't laugh, it was terrifying – the storm blew itself out.'

She held up her hand and waited for him to take it, his strong, suntanned fingers locking reassuringly into hers. 'It was unreal,' she continued, 'miraculous, the way the clouds parted and the sun came through and turned the whole world pink.' Her gaze never moved from the landscape on the wall. 'That painting is more than just a sunset,' she told him. 'There's gratitude layered in amongst all that paint. I remember the relief I felt when the storm broke, and how grateful I was to see the sun. I felt, at the time, that I'd never seen the colour pink before. Maybe Virgil felt that way, too.'

'It's a nice painting,' Cameron said. He meant it. He liked it better than the grotesque oriental sculptures that were the signature of the villa, their bronze bodies leaping unexpectedly from their alcoves to frighten the unwary wanderer. And then he said, 'Virgil seems to be on your mind a lot today.'

She didn't reply, and he didn't expect her to.

'Does it have to do with where Mr Tracy and Scott have gone?' he asked.

She didn't answer that, either, so he turned on his side to study her, her profile perfect in the oblique light from the lamp.

'Maybe they've found a body,' he said, watching her closely.

'Maybe,' she said, not turning to look at him.

'What was he like?' Cameron asked. 'I mean, what was Virgil _really_ like? Not what he was like as an engineer or a pilot or an artist. What was he like as a _person?_ As a man?' He waited, and when she didn't answer he asked again. 'Tin-Tin?'

'Why do you want to know?' she asked, and he could hear her breathing as she contemplated the bright pinks of the sunset on the wall. 'You never asked before.'

'Because it never seemed like a good time.' He nudged her, the movement loosening the silk of her kimono and exposing a sliver of sun-browned skin. 'So maybe now's a good time. It's just you and me and the painting...'

She exhaled delicately as he slid his fingers through the opening of the kimono. 'What do you want to know?' she asked.

'I don't know.' Her stomach was warm beneath his hand. And soft. 'Tell me the first thing that comes to mind. How about his habits?'

'His habits,' she mused as his thumb settled into the shallow dip of her navel. 'Alright. Virgil slept too much, he smoked too much, he was vain about his appearance and he wore a cravat.'

'I see.' Her skin pulsed warm beneath his fingers. 'And did he have any _bad_ habits?'

'He snored,' she told him.

'So the man was a saint,' Cameron laughed.

'In his own way, he was.'

'Wow.' Cameron leaned in to nip gently at her earlobe. 'Sounds like you had a thing for him.'

She didn't answer, her lips sucking in a tiny mouthful of air.

'You _did?'_ he asked, his breath hot in her ear.

'Cameron…'

'Seriously?' He pulled back to look at her. 'You had a thing for Virgil?'

'No,' she said, not meeting his incredulous stare, and there was that delicate sigh again. 'I mean, there were times when I could have, when we...' She shook her head. 'You need to understand. Virgil was a very handsome man. Very masculine. Women were drawn to him.'

' _Masculine_ and _cravat_ are not words that usually go together.' Cameron grinned hugely at the thought. 'Are you sure the girls weren't after him for his money?'

'That's not fair.'

He sighed melodramatically. 'Gimme a break. Until now I thought my only competition was Alan. And now I find out I'm competing with a _saint!'_

* * *

'The beginning?' Virgil asked.

'The rescue.' Jeff could really use a coffee, but there was nothing in this small, sterile room. Just three men looking at each other across a gulf of time and space. 'The last rescue.' _The one you didn't come home from._ 'Faulkner Labs. Do you – '

'I remember.' It came out woodenly, like a tale Virgil had told too many times.

'Do you remember what happened in the lab?' This wasn't what Jeff wanted to be, inquisitor to the son he'd thought was dead. And what use were words, anyway? He needed to touch Virgil, to smell him. _Then_ Jeff would know. He'd know beyond a shadow of a doubt.

'Virg.' Scott leaned towards the table and Jeff could feel the heat of him as he moved, burning its way across the narrow space between them. 'Are you okay?'

Virgil's gaze moved from his father to his brother, and then passed vacantly across the small white room as though he had never seen it before. 'I just want to go home.'

'I know,' Scott said. 'I hate this as much as you do. I hate this entire fucking setup. They're getting us to do their dirty work and I can't stand it. But this is only way we can get you out of here.'

There was anger in Scott's voice, Jeff could hear it. The rising kind of anger that usually ended in an explosion.

'Maybe you can't remember where you've been,' Scott was saying, 'but there must be _something_ you remember. There _has_ to be something. _Anything!'_

Virgil flinched. He tried to hide it, but it was too late, his brother had seen it.

Scott took a breath. He rubbed a hand over his mouth as if he could somehow wipe the anger away. 'I'm sorry,' he said. He sounded tired as he loosened the tie at his throat. The navy silk that he reserved for weddings and funerals – Scott had never said it out loud, but weddings and funerals were all the same to him. 'Spectrum have made it clear,' he continued as he worked at the knot in the silk, 'that the only way we can take you out of here is if you tell us where you've been and what you remember.'

Virgil watched silently as the tie came loose.

'Son,' Jeff said. He spared a glance towards the two-way mirror, and the who knows how many pairs of eyes that were watching from the other side of the glass. He could practically feel those invisible watchers breathing down his neck. Jeff moved, the plastic frame of the chair creaking loudly in the small, quiet space. 'Son. Help us. Please.'

Virgil breathed. Inhaled air. Slowly moistened his blood-drained lips. 'There was light,' he said at last. Whispered it. 'Too much light.'

'That's right.' Scott leaned closer to hear. 'There was a light. Gordon told us about the light.'

'Gordon's alright?' Virgil said. 'They told me he was alright.'

'Yes,' Jeff affirmed. At least on this one point Spectrum had been honest. Almost. 'Gordon is alright.'

Virgil swallowed, his throat visibly tight. 'I didn't believe them. I thought maybe he was here, somewhere.'

'No,' Jeff said, even though Spectrum had almost had Gordon permanently in its grasp. 'Gordon's safe. He's at home. He told us you fell into the light. Do you remember falling?'

The crease reappeared between Virgil's brows. 'Yes,' he said, his voice low and his hands turning on the table so that he could stare down at the creases in his palms. 'I fell. The floor was shaking and I fell. I fell into the light and the light was _everywhere_ …'

He looked up at his father, at his brother, and he smiled a sick kind of smile as though he were about to throw up. 'The whole world was made of _light.'_

'You fell into a field of some kind,' Scott said. 'Some kind of device...'

Virgil's head shook, a palsied kind of tremor. 'I'm not making sense,' he said. 'Nothing makes sense. Nothing, no matter how much I think about it.'

'Virgil.' Jeff was finding it hard to act natural with all those unseen watchers hanging on to every word. 'If you could tell us a bit more, Scott and I could try to understand.'

'You could never understand,' Virgil said.

'We'll try, son. Tell us more about the light.'

Virgil nodded, a doomed man headed inexorably to the gallows. 'The light,' he said, lifting his cuffed hands and spreading his fingers wide. 'It was _everywhere._ It was all around me…all over me, like lightning on my skin, crawling, and burning….' He swallowed, and Jeff saw that his hands were shaking. 'I was inside the light, but the light was _inside_ _me._ '

Virgil paused for a moment, licked at his lips again and continued on. 'It sounds crazy I know, but for a moment,' he breathed, 'I felt like I was made of light.' His lips quirked as he turned his hands again, the cuffs heavy against his wrists and making noise where they dragged across the table. 'But look at me,' he smiled, showing them his trembling hands. _'I'm not made of light.'_

* * *

'I _knew_ it.' Scarlet turned to face the collection of personnel crowded inside the observation room. The Colonel. Doctor Fawn. Captain Blue and himself of course. And a pair of med techs monitoring the sensor outputs. The room was nowhere near large enough for a half-dozen paranoid and sweaty men.

'That's all the proof we need,' Scarlet continued. 'Straight from the horse's mouth.'

'Your opinion is noted,' Colonel White replied, his attention never moving from the tableau in the adjacent room. 'But I would like to give the experiment every chance of success.'

'Success?' Scarlet was incredulous. 'The man just _admitted_ – '

'Virgil Tracy has admitted nothing other than that he remembers a very bright light.' Colonel White reached for his tea, took a sip, and returned the cup to the table in front of him. 'We need more information than that.'

'All due respect,' Scarlet said, 'but we have what we need. Recommend we terminate this farce as soon as possible.'

'Careful, Captain.' Colonel White turned from the window, his cool grey eyes fixing on Scarlet. 'I understand your frustration, but this type of challenge will not be tolerated.'

Scarlet crossed his arms and glared around at the other occupants of the room. Only Captain Blue was game enough to meet Scarlet's gaze, and Blue's barely-perceptible head shake and silently mouthed ' _no'_ only served to rile him more.

Scarlet turned pointedly away from Captain Blue's exasperated expression. ''This is new information,' he said. 'Virgil Tracy has admitted he remembers more than he says he does.'

'All the more reason for the experiment to continue. Perhaps the family can draw more out of him.'

'Begging the Colonel's pardon, but we need to close down this reunion now and question Virgil Tracy until he breaks!'

Colonel White skewered Captain Scarlet with a glare. 'You're taking this too personally, Captain. Perhaps you're too close to this situation to remain objective.'

'No, sir.' Scarlet returned the Colonel's glare.

'No sir what?'

If the air in the room wasn't already thick from the exhalations of six crowded men, it now became positively congealed. Scarlet's lips twitched. He turned back to the two-way mirror and watched as Jeff Tracy asked his son the same series of futile questions that had been asked of him before.

'Perhaps,' Doctor Fawn ventured into the uneasy silence, 'Captain Scarlet is correct.'

Five pairs of eyes turned to look at the doctor.

Fawn ignored the curious stairs and addressed his comments to the Colonel. 'Our instruments have detected no anomalies in Virgil Tracy's physical state, although his mental state appears to be entering another period of mild dissociation. Perhaps we could conclude this session and re-evaluate our approach?'

'What do you suggest, Doctor?'

Fawn cleared his throat. 'There's no doubt that this tactic has proven profitable – the subject has divulged more information during this interaction than he has during eight weeks of interrogation – '

'Probably because for eight weeks he's been playing us,' Scarlet interrupted.

'Captain, please.' Fawn looked aggrieved. 'Perhaps a series of these contacts, spaced out over a period of weeks – '

'The family will never agree to that.' Colonel White turned to observe the players on the other side of the glass. 'We're going to have trouble enough as it is.'

* * *

It had started as a trickle, a slow and steady build-up of warnings and broadcasts that had deteriorated in the last half-hour to a veritable deluge. TC Elinor had skimmed the north coast of Madagascar and was making violent landfall on the shores of Mozambique. The coast was going under, and from the surge of panicked voices that were crowding Thunderbird Five's speaker array, it was going under fast.

 _Hard to believe,_ John thought, given how serene the globe of the Earth looked from his cold and silent vantage point. He couldn't see Africa from here, couldn't see the swirling eye of Elinor wreaking her havoc on the other side of the globe. All John could see was the midnight peace of Oceania – the electric-light hubs of Honiara and Suva, and tiny flashes of lightning that flickered in shades of pink and orange in the dark. Fortunately there were other satellites that could see Elinor, and John was currently tapping their feeds and routing them down to the island.

'The port town of Nacala seems to be hardest hit,' John told the team assembled at Jeff Tracy's desk – even the absence of the man himself couldn't break the focus of his authority. 'Suggest you commence your efforts there.'

It was twenty-three hundred hours on Tracy Island. More exactly, 23:01:03 – a mere two-point-three minutes since he'd activated the callout. He had a real-time satellite feed displaying on Alan's portrait screen, and a situational analysis scrolling across Scott's.

'Orders?' Gordon asked. He had parked himself in the middle of the room to study the displays, and all John could see was the top left-hand quadrant of his head.

'You and Four piggyback with Cam in Two,' John replied. He was getting used to directing rescues from Five's console. 'Alan can FC in One. There are reports of vessels capsizing in the harbour – if Brains is up for another rescue he can double-duty in Two. You may need an extra pair of hands.'

Brains nodded his assent. Jeff Tracy's resident genius was looking crumpled and disheveled and John had no doubt the scientist had been burning the midnight oil when the call came through.

'Tin-Tin,' John said. 'Can you stay at the desk? The World Navy has already dispatched a complement of airborne carriers out of Djibouti. They'll have assistance on the deck in forty minutes and I need you to direct ground control. We may need to coordinate with those troops.'

'Of course, John.' Tin-Tin tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She had gotten dressed in a hurry, and it showed.

'Alright, let's move!' Cameron was already on his way to Thunderbird Two's hangar entry, t-shirt half-peeled over his head as he backed up against the hidden wall panel. John had no doubt Cameron would be down to his underwear by the time the chute deposited him into Two's cockpit – said it shaved off 43 precious launch seconds and he didn't care who complained. The man could be an ass when he wanted to, but there was no questioning his devotion to the cause.

It was a study in practiced efficiency as the rest of the team made for their respective Thunderbirds, Alan taking his position between the wall sconces of Thunderbird One's hangar entry and spinning silently out of sight as Gordon shunted Brains towards Two's passenger lift. Tin-Tin settled into Jeff's high-backed chair and activated the console behind the desk, glancing up as the lounge's secret panels all slid silently back into place. In the space of twelve seconds the room was as quiet and deserted as it had been just a few minutes earlier, the midnight silence broken another sixty seconds later by the rumble of Thunderbird One racing skyward and Thunderbird Two following shortly after.

John logged the radar returns of One and Two tracking west from the island and then returned his attention to the other problem at hand – namely that Scott's transmitter had been stationary at forty thousand feet for hours now. Back-dooring into NORAD's polar array had brought up an image of Spectrum's airborne aircraft carrier at the same coordinates, drifting east at a leisurely sixty knots over the North Sea.

John hadn't yet been successful in tapping into the carrier's incomings and outgoings thanks to a clever phase shift transmission protocol, but a phased transmission was only as good as the transmission cycle it was carried on, and John Tracy had cracked far more difficult problems than that.

* * *

Colonel White had endured countless uncomfortable silences throughout his career but this one probably topped out for the title of most uncomfortable, the agitation palpable in the air and distinctly visible in the twin glares of Scott Tracy and Captain Scarlet. There was anger and frustration engraved in the lines of Jeff Tracy's face as well, but where Jeff Tracy managed to at least look outwardly calm, Scott Tracy gave every appearance of being barely under control. They were tired, the Colonel reflected. They were expecting answers he was not at liberty to give. They probably also needed to eat, but Colonel White needed them immediately off his boat.

White reached for the cup that had been placed in front of him, sipping at the tepid brew and peering over the rim at the war being waged by the combatants at the far end of the conference table. The Colonel would not be exaggerating if he said that the temperature in the room had palpably plummeted the moment Scott Tracy had taken a seat opposite Captain Scarlet. International Rescue's field commander had fixed Spectrum's finest with a cold-eyed glare that Scarlet had spent the last few minutes pretending not to notice, his face steeled into an expressionless mask as Tracy attempted to burn holes in it with his eyes – all to the undisguised interest of Captain Blue, who cast surreptitious glances between the combatants whenever he thought his commanding officer wasn't looking.

The Colonel sighed inwardly, or possibly out loud, as the two combatants and their interested observer turned suddenly to look at him. A few seconds after that Jeff Tracy concluded his scrutiny of the faux-wood of the conference table and slowly raised his head. The man looked more haggard even than when he had first arrived at Cloudbase, the creases of age showing up more sharply around his eyes and mouth as the weariness of body and spirit etched itself inexorably across his face.

'We should begin,' the Colonel said. He returned his cup to its saucer with a muted clink. 'Gentlemen, it's time for your evaluation.'

'You've got to be joking,' Scott Tracy said, the anger and frustration plainly evident in his voice. 'Evaluation? That's – '

Colonel White held up what he hoped was a calming hand. 'The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the events of today and review the preliminary data that the Doctor will provide when he arrives. While we wait I had hoped that you could share your thoughts, or your insights, as a father and a brother. Is that man Virgil Tracy? Are you thoroughly convinced of his authenticity?'

'Yes,' Scott snapped out, exactly as the Colonel anticipated. 'No question.'

'I am,' Jeff Tracy added carefully, the delay in response telling the Colonel all that he needed to know. 'I would like to make arrangements to take Virgil home.'

'Mr Tracy,' the Colonel said. 'You don't sound completely convinced.' He watched as Scott turned to stare at his father.

'I don't need to be convinced.' Jeff ignored the questioning gaze of his son. 'That's my boy. Despite all of your warnings and your cautions and your threats, it couldn't be anyone – or any _thing_ – else.'

'I see.' The Colonel's eyebrows raised infinitesimally. 'Could you tell us what you base this opinion on? Were there any signs, any indications, that unequivocally mark this man as your son?'

'You can make your own assessment,' Jeff replied. 'I'm sure you recorded every word that was said.'

 _And every heartbeat, brainwave and facial tick as well,_ the Colonel thought. 'But a father knows,' he said out loud. 'Isn't that what you mean?'

'Are you a father yourself, Colonel?'

White smiled ruefully. 'This situation is far too dangerous to rely merely on a parent's intuition.'

'Given the circumstances,' Jeff replied evenly, 'that's all I have to offer.'

'Unfortunately it is not enough.'

'My father knows his sons,' Scott interjected. 'And I know my brothers. If we say we _know – '_

'It doesn't _work_ that way!' Captain Scarlet rose abruptly from his chair. 'You say that you 'know,' but there's an almost hundred percent chance you would be wrong! Fathers don't know, brothers don't know, husbands and wives and children _don't know!_ A Mysteron can take on any form, _any,_ and nobody _ever_ knows until it's _too late!'_

'Captain.' Colonel White waited as Scarlet reluctantly resumed his seat.

'Forgive the interruption,' White apologised. 'The Captain is too close to the subject matter. We're _all_ too close to the subject matter. We've seen good men die,' he told the Tracys. 'Colleagues and friends and yes, even family, lost forever to the Mysterons. It's an invisible war and we are fighting it hard.' White looked pointedly at Scarlet, but the officer wasn't looking back. 'Some of us are fighting it harder than most,' he finished.

Colonel White leaned back in his chair. He surveyed the occupants of the room and then fixed his careful gaze on Jeff Tracy. 'Let me make this clear. If you have any doubt about the man who claims he is Virgil Tracy, who _you_ claim is Virgil Tracy, if there is any question at all that he might not be your son, then you need to tell us.'

Jeff shook his head. 'It's impossible,' he said. 'Even if I accept what you're saying as true, how can one hour of conversation tell me what none of your instruments and tests have been able to? I admit it, Virgil doesn't seem to be the same. But two years have passed – are any of us the same? Even _I'm_ not the same as when Virgil disappeared.'

'My father's right – how could Virgil possibly be the same?' Scott Tracy's temper was on the boil again. 'You've been holding him in isolation for weeks – he has no idea where he's been or what's happened to him, and you people locked him away and traumatised him. You _tortured_ him – '

'We didn't torture him,' Scarlet said.

Scott glared at the captain. 'Let's see what the courts say.'

'Scott,' Jeff said. 'This isn't helping.' The Tracy patriarch inhaled a deep and steadying breath. 'We need more time,' he said to the Colonel. 'We need to take Virgil home. Where he belongs.'

White hated himself. He was about to break a father's heart with all the cruel efficiency he was capable of. 'I'm afraid that Spectrum can't agree to that. If Virgil is in any way compromised we can't afford to let him loose on the world. There's too much at stake. The fate of the planet – '

' _Listen_ to yourselves!' Scott's voice fairly dripped with contempt. 'The fate of the _planet?'_

Colonel White could feel the situation slipping out of his control. 'I don't think you understand what it is that we're up against.'

'No,' Scott agreed. 'I don't. Because you haven't given us anything concrete to go on and you keep talking in circles. That man is my brother. I _know_ it!'

'That's not enough,' Scarlet countered. 'You need to _prove_ Virgil Tracy is not a Mysteron.'

'Oh, for fucks sake!' Scott Tracy was suddenly on his feet. 'Prove to me that he _is_ a Mysteron! Prove to _me_ that Mysterons even exist! Until then, I am _finished_ with all this round-table _bullshit!'_

He was gone before the last sentence was out of his mouth, the door sliding shut behind him with a hiss that accentuated the sudden silence in the room. Beyond the door, there was a sound like furniture breaking.

Captain Blue pushed his chair away from the table. 'I'll go.'

'No.' Scarlet was already on his feet. 'I will.'

* * *

Goddamn son of a _bitch!_

It had been an exit, alright. Scott couldn't have gotten out of there fast enough – had barely made it out without leaping bodily across the conference table and smashing a fist into Scarlet's smug, annoying face.

Instead he took it out on the desk in the anteroom, waiting until the door slid shut behind him before he slammed a fist onto the moulded plastic and made the desktop crack so loud they must have heard it in the meeting room. He imagined his father wincing and the look Colonel White would be giving Jeff about now, and the glances that Scarlet and Blue would be giving each other and _fuck!_

Scott's fist hovered impotently over the desk – he wanted to smash the damn thing apart, wanted to rip it bodily into pieces and hurl it against the walls. They wouldn't get away with this _._ He wouldn't _let_ them get away with it.

He unclenched his fist and slid his thumb behind the buckle of his belt – he didn't have time to rip the furniture apart, not when he had a mainframe terminal sitting unguarded on the desk. Scott extricated a chip from the back of the buckle as he scouted the terminal's data access point. Sweat dampened the back of his neck as the device came free and he affixed it to the port, straightening from the desk a mere millisecond before the door behind him slid open with a pneumatic whoosh and wafted a wave of cool air in a faint eddy around him. He didn't turn around as footsteps sounded in the anteroom, but he would bet dollars for donuts that he knew whose aftershave that was.

'Mr Tracy?'

Scott stared down at the paperwork he'd dislodged on the desk when he'd thumped it. He had been right about the aftershave – it was Captain Scarlet's voice, as irritating as ever.

'Is everything alright?' Scarlet asked.

Goddamn it, the man never knew when to give up.

Scott forced a lungful of air past his gritted teeth. 'What,' he asked as he turned to face Scarlet, 'do _you_ think?'

Scarlet smiled. The son-of-a-bitch actually smiled. And then he murmured, softly and conspiratorially, 'Go on. You know you want to.'

Without warning Scott's fist came hurtling out of nowhere, impacted crushingly against Scarlet's jaw and sent him reeling back against the wall.

'You're right.' Scott brought his knuckles to his mouth and licked the sting out of his skin. 'I've been wanting to do that for two fucking years.'

Scarlet pushed himself away from the wall. A trickle of blood had appeared on his chin, and he tested the split in his lip with his tongue. 'Well done,' he said, erasing the blood from his chin with the back of his hand. 'Now we're even.'

'Oh no,' Scott told him. 'We'll never be even. Not until I've got my brother out of here and I've wiped that stupid smile clean off your face.'

Scarlet raised an inquiring eyebrow. 'Is that a threat, Mr Tracy?'

'It's a promise.'

A smirk tugged at the corners of Scarlet's lips. 'It's a challenge. Pistols at dawn? Or would you like to get it over with now?'

Scott took a step towards the Spectrum agent. 'Now,' he told him, sizing him up. They were almost matched for height and weight, and while Scott was no slouch when it came to personal combat he suspected Scarlet would have training in at least a half-dozen obscure martial arts that Scott wouldn't have a hope in hell of countering.

Scott bunched his fists and met Scarlet's challenging gaze – he was prepared for this to hurt.

* * *

Captain Blue turned his head to listen as a thump sounded against the conference room wall.

'Are you sure you don't want me to go out there?' he asked his commanding officer. 'Somebody might get hurt.'

'No, Captain.' Colonel White reached for his cup. The tea was cold already, but he sipped at it anyway. 'Unfortunately this is a necessary evil. Could you pour Mr Tracy a fresh cup of coffee?'

The officer unfolded his six-foot frame and squeezed his way around the conference table to the sideboard. 'I guess Doctor Fawn has decided not to come,' he said to the coffee pot.

Another thump sounded against the wall, and Jeff Tracy turned to look. The wall was white and blank and unadorned, and it didn't tell him anything.

* * *

Scott's fist lashed out – aiming not for Scarlet's impeccably chiselled jaw, but for the man's kevlar-covered solar plexus, hoping that with sufficient force and weight behind the punch he'd be able to knock enough air out of Scarlet's lungs to bring him down – if not all the way to the ground, then at least far enough down for Scott to bring up a knee and jam it into his mouth.

It didn't work out that way, of course. Scarlet's face registered enough surprise to indicate that he hadn't expected a body blow so soon in the proceedings, but he was fast enough on his feet to slide out of the arc of Scott's onrushing fist and bring his own fist smashing down onto Scott's shoulder-blade as he followed through.

It hobbled Scott – for about a second, and then he had righted himself, turning on his feet to face his foe's new position and rising to his full height to meet Scarlet's bemused gaze.

'You're fast,' Scott conceded.

'Unnatural, isn't it?' Scarlet moved like a predator as he readjusted his position. 'Some have even said it's not human.'

'Arrogant, too.' Scott squared his feet. 'And arrogant pricks like yourself deserve everything they get.' He launched himself bodily at Scarlet, grunting with satisfaction when their bodies collided with a bone-crunching _thunk_ and Scarlet was knocked back off his feet by the force of Scott's six-foot-plus-inches slamming into him. Scarlet sprawled onto his back, clipping the chair behind the desk as he fell and sending it spinning noisily across the room. Scott went down with him, close enough that he could smell the salt-water tang of Scarlet's aftershave as he pinned him to the ground. In a split-second he had a hand clamped around Scarlet's throat and was tightening his other hand into a fist, hauling it back with the full intention of slamming it into the officer's clean-shaven face – so intent on Scarlet's impending knuckle sandwich that he was completely unaware that the tables were turning and somehow Scott found himself flipped onto his back and Scarlet was on top of him, the officer's knee digging hard into his chest and the bastard hadn't even raised a sweat.

' _Fuck,'_ Scott grunted as he aimed a fist wildly towards Scarlet's head, unsurprised when the officer raised a hand and caught it and crushed it in his own.

Scott would have expected Scarlet to smile, or to smirk, or to make some kind of snide remark that he was no match for Spectrum training. Instead Scott saw a shadow pass across Scarlet's face, the officer's eyes suddenly growing dark, and Scott would swear he glimpsed a flicker of green at the back of those blue-water irises as Scarlet loomed above him.

'What the _hell,'_ Scott breathed, because a knife had appeared like magic in Scarlet's free hand and the officer was aiming it towards Scott's captured fist. Scott's eyes widened, because what the hell was this crazy fuck doing, and he found himself pulling away, his hand sliding free because Scarlet had abruptly let it go.

Scott watched, dumbfounded, as the blade disappeared into the palm of Scarlet's hand, sliding through the flesh like it was butter and bringing forth a stream of thin, dark blood.

Distaste marred Scarlet's lips, the officer withdrawing the knife and turning his palm so that Scott could see the wound and watch the blood well in crimson drops to splash down onto the white linen of Scott's shirt. Scott stared, mesmerised by the wound scored deep into Scarlet's flesh, his eyes widening as the neatly sliced edges sparked with green and Scarlet's palm began to rapidly knit itself together.

'What the _fuck?'_ Scott scrambled back across the floor, a slow horror dawning on his face.

'Now,' Scarlet said, and this time he had Scott's full and undivided attention. _'Now_ you understand what we're up against.'


End file.
